Report: Most Heavily Taxed Nations Are the Happiest

MarketWatch:

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says people in Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are the most content with their lives. The three ranked first, second and third, respectively, in the OECD's rankings of "life satisfaction," or happiness.

There are myriad reasons, of course, for happiness: health, welfare, prosperity, leisure time, strong family, social connections and so on. But there is another common denominator among this group of happy people: taxes.

Northern Europeans pay some of the highest taxes in the world. Danes pay about two-thirds of their income in taxes.

Read the whole story: MarketWatch

Comments

[BeasleysMom]

I have often wondered why gops are so miser able and unhappy. It is clear now. They do not pay enough in taxes.

[LeighAnnes]

Haha. They really don't. Google it. Red states have the lowest incomes. So they would be paying less taxes. Red states are also the welfare states. They get more money from the Federal government than they pay in Federal taxes. We generous blue states subsidize them.

[confidance government]

You're suckers

[LITU]

Opportunity in America is a euphemism for personal wealth and defines why the U.S. can never embrace the kind of socialism of northern Europe. It's been that way since the Continental Congress (all those vast natural resources).

[LeighAnnes]

We're trying. Ideas are becoming more liberal. As the years go and demographics continue to change, liberals will have more power. Conservatives tend to be older white men or uneducated, Southern white men. Minorities, women, and educated white men are trending liberal.

[LITU]

Well, I'm on your team, except you should bear in mind that all laws are transitory, and the history of this country is replete with anti-social legislation.

I believe in one American constant, if there's a way to make a buck off of me, someone will try.

Cynicism, for me, is a learned trait.

[bluejoni2525]

"Bring it on" I'm all for higher taxes in exchange for peace of mind and a more European lifestyle . This "hamster wheel " here is ridiculous !!!

[BeasleysMom]

Yes. If I was younger, I would definitely move to Italy. This country offers less and less to its citizens.

[confidance government]

Italy?????

WTF, you offer one of the most corrupt western states as your preference? Denmark, Germany, France, I could have understood. But Italy, where they redefined blogs as newspapers in order to control the criticism of the government?

[Firbolg]

The business of America is business. Not people. I'm sure we rank first in business happiness.

[cdnnewsjunky]

:) You're probably right!

[FormerReaganite]

And we worship at the altar of the god of money.

[freethemarkets212]

SOCIALISM=Trickle up poverty.

[bluejoni2525]

Here we just get trickled down on !!!!

[LITU]

UNFETTERED FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM = oligarchy, aristoctracy, and the certainty of increased poverty.

[111]

wrong

Socialism = better quality of life for all
Freemarkets = world poverty

[FormerReaganite]

Actually, the capitalist system is "trickle up" in that the worker actually creates the wealth, while the rich man enjoys the fruits of the worker's labor.

The little wheel must turn the big wheel.

[drymartini1]

Correlation DOES NOT EQUAL Causation !!

I could show a statistical study with happiness rising with Butter production in some country !! That doesnt mean its true.

[bluejoni2525]

Good try !!!! You lose!!!!

[ReedYoung]

Is that all you know about statistics? Because your observation correlates strongly to my *first day* of statistics 101. The purpose of statistical science is not to cast doubt asserting that nothing is certain, but to seek the strongest correlation and make rational inferences from the data that *can* be collected. The challenge is to determine which correlations are spurious and which are most likely to be causative. If you can document a stronger correlation, please, share it. We'd all like to know how to be more strongly correlated to happiness without increasing our tax burdens -- even the "socialists" in western Europe would be happier to have even more money*, if it truly is a net gain, meaning if it serves their overall happiness.

* I beg the pardon of any western European socialists who simply enjoy paying taxes they would not want them reduced in any circumstance. I guess I don't know everything about western European socialists yet.

[LeighAnnes]

This is a liberal site. Everyone knows that.

[FormerReaganite]

THINK, MAN.

Europeans are happier because they get more return on their investment (taxes) than we do here in the U.S. It is nice to know that you get value out of what you pay for isn't it?

[ZenCrusader]

This list is nuts - the people in Costa Rica are amongst the happiest people in the world - you don't have to have a fully developed infrastructure & a Euro-Secur­ity-Blanke­t to be happy in life. Try again !

[JayDDrew]

Ever wonder why Costa Rica is a retirement haven for wealthy Americans? Because it's a nice place to live with a low cost of living!

[freethemarkets212]

The people are poor dumwhit

[keepitreal50]

Paying more taxes in this country, the US, won't equate to the same result because we have too many criminals and crooks, not to mention a government who could give a damn about protecting our well-being and seeing to it that we get what we pay for. In this country, the United States of America, forget it. We ain't so "UNITED". (History tells us). We will get robbed, by our own people, period. That's why we are so far behind. I wouldn't mind relocating, myself. And it's a shame to be forced to feel that way but this is a nation of greed, anger and stupidity sorry to say. And as the days go by, it isn't hard to see why we fail.

[freethemarkets212]

We need the FAIR TAX end of story.The states have the right by the Constitution to fight Obama.If Civil War over Socialism doesn't start,the states will be divided into Capitalism,and Socialism.­I like to make money so ill move to a Republican State.Hope­fully new laws will prevent Liberals,and Democrats from stealing our money(At least we will know once and for all which system works)

[ReedYoung]

"The states have the right by the Constitution to fight Obama."
Article, Amendment, or Presamble?

"If Civil War over Socialism doesn't start,the states will be divided into Capitalism,and Socialism.­I like to make money so ill move to a Republican State."
Don't let the door hit you.

"Hopefully new laws will prevent Liberals,and Democrats from stealing our money."
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html
Actually, from giving you our money. Please take a look at these tables, and compare to red state / blue state election 2008 results.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/its-not-about-appalachia.html

Voters in the states that pay more income taxes than their states receive, understand and acknowledge the need for stimulus and infrastructure spending, and voted for the good of our country.

[Myshkin57]

You move to a Republican state. Which states are most prosperous? hmmm... that's a toughy... oh yeah... it's all the ones that are perennially blue on election nights.

[LeighAnnes]

Go ahead. Live in a Republican state. They are the ones with the lowest average incomes. They are also the welfare states which receive more in Federal taxes than they pay. That must be because the Republicans are so good at economics.

[judiNJ]

Just take your state and leave us alone with our desire for some happiness. I really don't care and to be honest, it probably would have been better if the South had been allowed to succeed in 1863. Oh, and while you are at it, forget the bogus religious talk. It is such a crock! The only problem would be to have a bunch of thugs with guns lurking along our happy border.

[FormerReaganite]

Your idea is incredibly stupid.

[innerpeace]

The where I live is better than where you live is nothing more than playground childishne­ss.Humans like different things and others do not have to like what you like.It is sad that happiness is so closely linked to money.

[Heavy]

Don't come to the thread if you don't want to learn the results of the study. Information is such a bad thing eh?

[innerpeace]

The fact that these people are happy where they live does not mean that all would be happy living there.Holl­and and some of those other places are too crowded for me.

[Heavy]

My bad, mistook you for a tr0ll. Bad rooster.

[JayDDrew]

Some people don't listen and only hear what they want to.
Read the article, and read some of the original posts on the article, not just the posts here on HP.
The bottom line is many wealthy Americans, including elected officials, maintain and increase their wealth through "backdoor" capitalism. That is, they own and/or invest in the major corporations that receive the huge outlays from the Fed (primarily through military contracts) or corporations that dominate enterprises such as insurance and health providers.
You think Republicans, and Democrats to some extent, are not receiving income from major health insurers? Article after article tell us insurance companies siphon off over 40% of premiums for overhead and profit. Medicare takes only 3%. Problem is insurance companies are dealing with the better off Americans: younger and employed people, while government programs take care of the poor, unhealthy and elderly. So, of course, it skews the Fed's results because they are dealing with the least profitable.
I always tell people who whine about the Medicare taken from their paychecks, what if you paid a small percentage more, say 3%, but then you didn't have to pay health insurance? Don't you see how much better off you would be? But most are too stupid to see it because they listen to right-wing media rail about socialized health care and believe that ridiculous hype.
Earth to you idiots: Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are NOT in your tax bracket!

[FormerReaganite]

Of course Hannity and Limbaugh are going to protest anything that raises *their* taxes. They are all set. But they don't *really* care about anyone else, they just want to rev up support for lower taxes so that they, and they alone, can benefit. Amazing, all of the minimum-wage earners who support them, though, even though they would benefit the most from national health care. Wake up, minimum-wage Faucks News listeners! Or the joke will be on you!

[freethemarkets212]

If we go to THE FAIR TAX,we could all (except the folks who want poverty)have the money to pay for whatever we want.Socia­l programs are economic drains.The government already runs 46% of health care(That's why it fails)and you want them to run all of it.Ill say it again(Liberal Democratic policies have destroyed CA,and NY) When will people realize that

[dutchman]

"Liberal Democratic policies have destroyed CA,and NY"

Why hasn't Massachusetts been ruined, then? Or Holland? Or most of the rest of the western world?

[freethemarkets212]

All Liberal policies will fail in time(They are all unsustainable)You are being tricked,by the STATISTS

[ReedYoung]

"The government already runs 46% of health care(That's why it fails)"
The problem could not possibly be the 54% run by private corporations, according to you, why?

"Liberal Democratic policies have destroyed CA,and NY"
Sort of. The whole truth is that wasting Liberal Democrats' hard-earned, willingly paid taxes on ungrateful, conservative / Republican / red states is driving California and New York to insolvency. We should insist, by federal statute, that federal spending in every state is no less than 90% of revenues collected by the federal government from that state the previous year, and no more than 110% of what that state contributed to The Republic's budget the previous year. Then even you red statists could understand that it is you that is the most onerous consumer of others' earnings.

[JayDDrew]

Great point. Federal taxes that should go back to NY and CA go to pay for the military complex pumped up by the rightwing chicken hawks. If Federal taxes are reduced, each state can then increase its own taxes as needed to pay for itself.

[LeighAnnes]

What would they do in Alaska? The Red state that gets more than twice what it pays in Federal taxes back from the Federal government­...I'm surprised Sarah hasn't been saying "thanks but no thanks" to the money.

[JayDDrew]

By your argument, the other 54% of health care is run by private enterprise and is profitable. You know why? Because nearly 50 million Americans either can't afford those companies' premiums or have been kicked off the rolls because, and here's the catch, they actually had medical problems which cost the health insurance companies' money!!!
It's heads I win, tails you lose with insurance providers.
I've read Neal Boortz's book. The proposed 23% FairTax doesn't work. Actual studies put the number into the low 30's, which starts bringing it up closer to what some European countries pay. If you think Steve Forbes, who constantly preaches FairTax, is going to pay 30-odd per cent without having enough loopholes to get it back down to the teens (he actually preaches 17%, I believe), you're drinking his kool aid. It's intellectual dishonesty.
The first cuts should be military spending, but the Right immediately howls about that because so many of their upper crust are making money off of military contracts, it's ridiculous. Case in point: KBR, the non-US subsidiary of Cheney's Haliburton that did contract work with forbidden countries, thereby circumventing US law.

[LeighAnnes]

All Republican policies are failing. I live in New York and I'm perfectly happy with what I get for my taxes. Good health care, good schools, etc. We'd have more money in our budget but we only get 75 cents back on every dollar we pay in federal taxes. We have to support the Republican welfare states. I don't really mind. I'm just tired of you taking our money and then whining that the government is taking yours.

[Catriona]

I'm so sorry that your government is totally incompetent and morally bankrupt.

Our government here in France is far from perfect, but overall they do a fine job with everything from the healthcare system, to the schools, to the nation's infrastructure.

Too bad you can't count on your government for... well...by your own admission.­.. anything.

[elizlucinda]

It isn't high taxes that make us happy...It­'s what we get for those taxes that makes us content. Here in that bachward country known as Canada, we have universal health insurnace, and other social programs and we do not pay a higher rate of tax overall

[ReedYoung]

It also isn't as simple as "freedom" or "choice" making us happy.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200

As it pertains to single payer health care, I claim that medical science and the insurance industry have already determined, scientifically and mathematically, respectively, what is the most rational choice for all health care that will be necessary for the vast majority of us in our lifetimes. Some few will suffer maladies or combinations previously unknown to the practice of medicine, requiring actual choices to be made, and some few will belong to such small risk groups that actuarial science will not adequately have incorporated their medical care into the standard tables. But for most of us, the "choice" in health care being noisily championed as vital to the preservation of Constitutional liberty is literally nothing but a waste of our time. For the statistical outliers, nobody is talking about outlawing private health care policies, supplemental to the universal coverage the government should begin to offer, anyway. The protest against single payer medical care is much ado about nothing -- actually, less than nothing, because this particular "freedom" is really a net loss of happiness, or in the economists' language, utility.

Checkmate.

[thenorthshore]

some may want to increase their taxes for 'health care' and other socialist policies

are you ready for these kind of taxes:

the netherlands

incomes over 53K euro taxed at 52%

vat tax (similar to our sales tax) 19%

savings accounts 30%

dividends: 25%

[Heartfire]

VAT is 19% on luxury items, necessities like food and medicine are on the 6% VAT

Savings accounts I think you mean the capitalgainstax, on savings higher than 20315 euro's and an additional 2715 euro per child. Below that it's tax free. It's 30% over an imaginary gain of 4% per year, which works out to a 1.2% tax. A savings account if you shop around a bit will give you at least 3.0% currently. I'm lead to believe that in the US you'll be hardpressed to find a higher than 1.5% interest rate on savings accounts which means that even with the tax you are better off in The Netherlands.

The dividend tax is 15%, and is deductible from your income tax.

[LeighAnnes]

Now now. Don't confuse thenorthshore with real facts instead of the made up one's he needs to try to prove his point.

[ReedYoung]

I was born in the United States and have had the pleasure of extended stays in Holland -- Hilversum and Bussum to be specific -- and these Dutch men are not making up their better quality of life. It is a fact.

On the income left over from my minimum wage college campus jobs, and with room and board paid, I had a blast on a *very* small budget. I stayed in a quiet suburb with my parents, but if I felt like wandering around the Van Gogh museum, or Madam Tussaud's [never did, but it's a popular attraction] or the Torture Museum [visited that, and all I have to say is "Ick!"], I could be in downtown Amsterdam in an hour, half of which was walking from my house to the train station. If I observed Dutch tradition more closely, I would have taken a bicycle to the train station and my commute time would probably have been 35 minutes.

If it wasn't for the education barrier -- to transfer credit for the equivalent of their BS degree, the lowest college degree they offer, requires a Master's from the worthless United States education system -- I would certainly have moved there permanently by 1999.

[Catriona]

There is something else, something a bit more subtle. In Europe we have access to resources that are private in the US.

Beaches, lakefront, riverfront, and waterfront are not privately owned but available for public use. To put it another way, the beach below the grand chateau is a public beach. We can relax and take mini-holidays on our days off.

Typically, here in France, on weekends we see extended families riding their basket-laden bicycles to the beaches, little kids, parents, teens, young adults, and older folks, riding along in a row. (They have cars but the bikes are part of the day out.)

Europe isn't like the US, where on broiling hot days people are crowded onto tiny public beaches and while they sit inches away from strangers they can look along the coast, and in both directions, as far as the eye can see, there are fewer people using those beaches than the person has fingers on both hands.

[Prakosh]

"Simply, you pay for what you get. Taxes in the U.S. have taken on a pejorative association because, well, we are never really quite sure of what we get in return for paying them, other than the world's biggest military."

This is what are paying high taxes for and what has it actually done for us??? We long ago exchanged happiness and security for the Pentagon. Someone made that "choice" and we get almost nothing in return for that. We are also getting ripped by someone because even though we are by far the richest nation in the world we rank 15th on a per capita basis for income. So we pay taxers for a military and work for the welfare of the top two or three percent of the population who takes our money, basks in off shore tax havens, and makes millions while paying like the VP did about 10 percent o their mulltimillion dollar income in taxes. And then complaining about how overtaxed they are!!

[ReedYoung]

"This is what are paying high taxes for and what has it actually done for us??? We long ago exchanged happiness and security for the Pentagon."

I claim it is not the Pentagon as such, but the mercenary industry, so-called "private military contractors" which are the root of all our problems. I know, it isn't original since Eisenhower, but if you haven't read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein, I think it helps explain a lot that otherwise looks like a lot of bad luck and incompetence. That was W.'s pre-emptive cover story, but everything that went wrong the past eight years was intentional.

[Bobzmcishl]

Republican's have been trying to make "socialism" the big bogeyman for years with some success, but after decades of this baloney, their message is worn very thin. We need comprehensive health care reform before the health insurers put us on an irreversible economic decline. Hopefully we will get some form of single payer health care, but there is no doubt our current system is broken and needs fixed in a hurry. Even business recognizes this which is something - they usually have their heads buried in the sand on health care.

[LeighAnnes]

Isn't great? The majority of Americans no longer consider "socialism" a bad word. The Republicans keep trying to use it because it appeals to their base (18% of the population tops) but are alienating everyone else. I too want single payer health care. Why should health care be tied to jobs? Just think how much better it would be if we could all change jobs when necessary without that being an issue. Why should companies be in the business of providing health care anyway?

[timberdoodle]

Last night Ron Paul was spouting smaller government and doing away with social programs like the Department of Education and the Department of Agriculture etc.

This is the conservative view point and boils down to those who can afford to send their children to school will get them an education and doing away with the Department of Agriculture would eliminate all the protection agencies currently set up like the FDA etc.

Less Government and lower taxes sounds great until you see what this ideology leaves you with in the end. Of course I guess most Americans know this already with their current health insurance program.

[FormerReaganite]

Ron Paul is basically advocating a return to the medieval feudal system.