I dislike taxes for one main reason: the government requires individuals to calculate their own taxes and imposes heavy penalties for mistakes. While I have no problem paying taxes as a US citizen, it seems strange to me that I have to do the paperwork when the government already has all the necessary information.
I don't regret the financial mistakes I've made in the past, as they've all taught me valuable lessons. However, my biggest misstep was planning my finances without consulting a licensed financial advisor.
I sought the guidance of a financial counselor, and as I near retirement, their advice has proven invaluable. I was initially concerned that compound interest on index funds wouldn’t suffice since I started investing later. It's quite amusing to realize that I’ve outperformed colleagues with more investment experience, having gained over $186k tax-free.
@@williamDonaldson432 This is definitely significant! Do you have any recommendations for professionals or advisors I could contact? I really need guidance on proper portfolio allocation.
Rebecca Lynne Buie is the coach who guides me. With years of experience in the financial markets, her strategies have worked well for me and contributed to my success. She offers clear entry and exit points for the securities I focus on
Thank you for the tip. I found your coach online and conducted my due diligence before scheduling a call. Based on her resume, she appears to be highly proficient.
Great Video ! BUT . . .Sweden's wealth inequality is tiny compared to the United States where the top 1% essentially own the Government and funnel the massive Federal Budget directly into their coffers !
Same goes for my country Denmark, where your LEGO comes from. 80% middle class country (I think the UK only 39% and the US only 50%). We pay high taxes, but our roads and infrastructure look nice and the population is very satisfied. Breaking up private income and outcome, Danes don't pay more in the end in a life circle. And you don't finance through living in debts. Your kids education doesn't depend on your income. Universal healthcare. Less pressure due to social security nets, -happier populations in Scandinavia.
Sweden's wealth inequality is the result of old money. Money that has been in the hands of the same families for hundreds of years goes back to Feudalism. America's wealth is largely new money that has arisen in the last few decades bringing with it technological breakthroughs such as smart phones and electric cars. Not really a fair comparison.
It's how jobs get created. And it's being painted like it's greed. The wealth exists in having built all these opportunities for people to work toward things others want.
@@juancilliers8710 There is no limit to how much wealth can be created. A business that uses land, labour, materials and resources is worth multiple times the sum of all it's parts. If you stripped out all the 'Good Will' value and just valued the land, materials and machinery then you would have a more balanced distribution of 'wealth.' The Wealthy are those that create these efficient use of existing resources and have them valued on the stock markets at 20-50 times the base cost. Yes, there are loads of elites living off government contracts and this should be stopped but blaming creators from creating more wealth is collectivist nonsense. Do the vast majority of people have access to more real world resources today than yesterday. If the answer is yes, then the system is working, if no, then the system is hoarding the resources. The numbers are a misdirection at best used by toxic ideologies to create a state of FEAR by creating the illusion that we live in scarcity rather than unlimited abundance that is only limited by peoples lack of imagination and creativity to make things with the resources around them. Govern-Minds (mentis=Mind) control the masses via FEAR, False Evidence Appearing Real. You can only control what you Create - 10 Rules of Commerce
It's also just how math works. If you break it down into percentiles the lowest 1% would have to own at least a little less than the 2nd lowest percentile, so on and so forth. If you had to now assign numbers to this what percent of the wealth should the poorest 1% own to make this work? Is it going to be something like 0.5% of the wealth? Then the next 1% own 0.51%? If you end that sequence with the top 1% owning 2% of the wealth then it becomes you can only become 4 times as rich as your poorest citizen (kind of). These also need to be adjusted for age. Because I think people that worked for 40 years should be at least 40 times as wealthy as someone that has only worked 1 year. (a 65 year old vs a 19 year old)
I am not swedish , But came across your video about Private equity So I explored your channel. I love the content and quality of your videos. I hope you will achieve success very soon here on youtube, Just give some of your focus on going viral and figure out to beat the algorithm. Regards, Your new loyal subscriber.
True. The top 1% are responsible for 45% of the tax revenue, which is already proportionately higher than the wealth percentage they own. When the fuck will it be considered "fair"? But it gets worse because heavy taxation is absolutely trickled down into the prices of the goods and services their companies provide, which effectively makes the poor poorer by making the things they need to buy more expensive. Taxation is a tool of incentive, and when you tax the people who are better off, you are literally saying as a nation that you don't want your people to be better off. It is as simple as that. I dare say that a country with zero taxes for the rich would have no poverty within a generation.
@@matheusdardenne in what universe does the absence of tax becomes a more prominent incentive to be rich other than, you know, wanting to have a decent livelihood and not wanting to live in poverty? The richest people pays more tax by percentage than the poorest and it should be that way. Just for a very crude analogy, do you expect two persons making $10k/year and $10M/year to both pay 1% tax? The first one would barely have any left to have a decent living while the other still have so much more to spend for a luxurious life. And I agree with your point that heavy tax for corporations could negatively impact the poor. But that's where wealth tax could be effectively used to put the burden more on personal wealth rather than companies
@rexygama7697 Taxation is the government taking away your money and giving NOTHING worthwhile in return, not that a return would justify the theft in the first place. It makes it harder for poor people to rise above their status because taxes are progressive, meaning that the more they climb the wealth brackets, the harder it becomes to keep climbing because rates increase. The progressive tax system, thus, creates this "thermal equilibrium" where the majority of people are stuck just below the middle class. First of all, both are currently paying over 80% of what they earn in direct or indirect taxation in my country. Second, I want both of them to pay fucking NOTHING, because there is NOTHING being provided back with that money being stolen from them. Third, if taxation is impossible to abolish, then yes, a 1% rate would be FAIR, because who makes 10k a year will be paying 100, and who makes 100k a year will be paying 1000, I think even you can understand that 1000 is more than 100.
@@rexygama7697 Why, instead of creating a wealth tax, don't you force your government to reduce their spending and to live within its means? Why, instead of stealing money from the poor, squandering half of it in corruption and inefficiencies, to only then provide mediocre services back to the people, don't you let people keep their money so they won't be poor in the first place?
@@matheusdardenne tax revenue contributes to a substantial amount of share in countries GDP. In Sweden it's around 41% in 2022. It goes to public healthcare, infrastructure, military, government officials that keeps the country running, etc. You can say it's a subscription for being a citizen of a country, where in return, you get all the benefits of citizenship. I can see where you are headed with "stuck in the middle class" argument, but it's kinda the "intended" side effect that taxation aims. Tax will indirectly distribute wealth among populations and reduce economic inequalities. Of course too much of it can be harmless and even hinder economic progress. As for your last point, I would argue that both should NOT be taxed the same (by percentage). Tax exemption, for example in income tax, should be applied so that people earning below a certain threshold pay less or zero percentage of their income for taxes. Progressive income tax is necessary so that the lower middle class people don't have to be burdened as much since they would still have to struggle to meet basic needs. Living on 99k/year is way more comfortable than 9,9k/year. So why not just make it so that one person gets 98,9k/year while the other gets 10k/year (no taxes). In both cases, the government collect 1,1k. I bet the first person would barely notice the difference while the second one would be very graceful to have an extra 100 to buy some groceries :)
@@edheldude yet the ability of people to move upwards through the wealth categories is less then ever before, so competencies aren't the deciding factor. It's harder and harder than previous recent decades to make a lot of money if you don't start out with a lot of money already.
@@Ocker3 I think people are just more passive, less autonomous, more mentally and physically sick, and many businesses require more intellect and character. Left and old money are also building more obstacles for people but in reality most people don't try to be financially autonomous and try to build a business. On the flipside, this also means there's less compentent competition. I'm on my third business and it feels like the bar is super low.
Watched two videos and subbed. Nice videos, although not exactly new information, but very professionally done. There cannot be enough channels spreading the information you talk about and you do a great job in making it easy to digest and understand. Only one little addition. Consumption tax, which you glossed over pretty much, is also a deeply unfair tax. A single person who is extremely wealthy will never ever use much of their wealth to actually consume (if they even do it at all and do not circumvent it by covering their expenses through companies they own). So any consumption tax is, like income tax, a tax that hits the poor much harder then the wealthy in relation to the respective overal wealth and in regards to the disposable income that is left after taxation.
Was looking through the comments to see if someone else had already made that point! Many people think of flat taxes like consumption tax as "fair", when the exact opposite is true. And I think it's quite universally accepted among economists that giving money to poor people is great for the economy, since they (have to) spend most of it, while money that goes to/stays with rich people is MUCH more likely to get transferred abroad or - best case - sit in a bank account/property where it accrues minimal tax revenue.
@@ChocookieMonster It is also a big difference in the economy. Money given to the poor ends up almost entirely in domestic businesses usually. So it is an indirect investment into small businesses in your own country, strengthening the domestic economy. Which is the actual backbone for everything else.
you forget that taxes are imposed to provide and maintain common services like roads etc. These services are used more than 90% by the 90% class you mention. So your notion of taxation is just another Marxist poppycock idea. Taxation without consent is tantamount to robbery. it funds kleptocracy, corruption, and government fascism. your rather simpleminded notion that the rich somehow can be taxed to make society fairer is just another idiotic argument made by Marxists. Hasn't 100 years of failure taught you something? One gets better results by restricting government power and reinventing the imposition of forced levies like taxes.
@@ChocookieMonsterMany jurisdictions don't apply consumption taxes to the basic necessities of life (food, shelter, etc.). The poor tend to spend a lot higher per centage of their income on the necessities of life and thus pay much less in consumption taxes. Also, at least some jurisdictions have "luxury taxes" on higher ticket items. If you study macroeconomics, you find that consumption taxes is one of the better ways of taxing, as income taxes tend to discourage people from working harder and earning more.
People lose track of how BIG a billion is. If dollars were grains of salt, then avg. lifetime earnings in the US (~$2 mil) will fill a coffee mug. A billion fills a bathtub.
@@tj92834 ... also... Just because the economic structures of the 21st century make billionares a stochastic inevitability that's no reason to think they are "worth" more than anyone else. Financializing human value (also known as "treating people like objects") is fundamentally immoral. ... and the current economic structures are subject to change.
@@tj92834 The economic structures of the 21st century make billionares a stochastic inevitability. There's no reason to think they are "worth" more than anyone else. Financializing human value (also known as "treating people like objects") is fundamentally immoral. ... and the economic structures are subject to change.
@tj92834 almost true, but not quite. I can name a few companies that have been highly successful, without making any single person super rich. Some of the wolds leading companies in their field are cooperatives, some are state owned. Area, Danish Crown, Orsted, DSV, and Wattenfalla, just to name a few. Other leading companies are owned by shareholders without any single owner becoming super rich.
Love the production quality and clear explanations! Only one thjnf stops me from linking and subscribing: Please add *sources* in the description! I believe its a dangerous trend that there are so many video essays on youtube doing great stuff, but not providing the evidence for their claims. Thanks!
it's the same here in austria. we had a pretty good tax system up until 1990. but right now, if you work for a company with a good income you'll easily pay 40% of your income in taxes. if you instead own said company you can hoard all your income in a holding company and pay 0%. only when you take money out of the holding you pay a meager 25%. if you also happen to own another company abroad you can shuffle that money around and pay 0% taxes in total.
Yes and we used to have an inheritance tax, but now whenever it gets proposed (even when the proposal is for a progressive tax rate with no tax on the first million (!!)) people freak out because they irrationally fear they might be affected if they manage to save up another 990.000€ and die - stoked by the tabloid press, of course
This is not exactly accurate. Corporations in Austria pay 25 % on all their gains (business tax "KöSt"), and another 27,5 % on all money that is taken out of the companies (capital gains tax "KeSt"), so business owners in Austria pay more than half of their profits in taxes.
@@123jakob1234 except if they don't make gains because you pay the gains into a holding which owns the company. then you don't pay KöSt at all, becaue your company doesn't make any profit, instead you only pay KeSt when you take your money out of your holding. therefore you can accumulate massive amounts of money and assets tax free if you keep everything in your holding. you can use the profits in the holding to buy real estate or stocks or whatever (or pay back loans) and don't pay a single cent in tax because your holding owns all those things instead of you as a person. oh, and KöSt has been lowered to 23% since 2024. and we're not even talking about Gruppenbesteuerung yet.
@@123jakob1234 The money taken out of a company doesn't have to be a gain though. The company can just grow and invest it's income, so it doesn't have to pay the 25%. This leaves only the 27,5% if the assets have stayed in Sweden.
Why do content creators never mention the absolute amount of tax paid by the billionaires. Or the total amount of tax share paid by billionaires. I suspect the rich pay more than their fair share in absolute amount. Maybe 1% of billionaires pay 30 % of total tax paid? Do better research please.
@beerharmien Because A) if you got 10 billion, paying 1 billion in taxes has no impact on you. If you got 100 bucks, paying 10 means you go hungry. And B) if you got 10 billion, your money makes money. After paying 1 billion in taxes, next year you'll still have 11. If you only got 100 bucks, losing 10 takes away from your ability to invest in the future. That's why poverty is a vicious circle and inequality increases.
@@ericdane7769 That’s not my question. For fair reporting, content creators should also present how much taxes are paid by the top 1% compared to the 99%. In my country, only 3% of people pay income taxes, and people are still complaining.
@@ericdane7769 Now to address your points. For A) Are we talking about wealth or income? If you are taxing wealth, that's a communist system. The rich will have to start selling assets when they reach $1mil, $10mil or $100mil? They will never become rich in the first place. No Spotify, no Tesla, no free Google or RUclips because nobody will bother. If we are talking income then yes, 10% is nothing but nobody makes 10B a year income consistently. And B) That's the whole point of amassing wealth right? Your money makes money and your capital doesn't get shrunk by inflation. That's the whole point of retirement planning also. I agree, poverty is a vicious cycle. Everyone must be given an "opportunity" to escape poverty but only if they act on it. Or else, you are just creating handout nation.
@@zombi3lif3 being that it is now becoming normalized in mainstream thought, I think we are on our way to progress. However, it does rely on people waking up to the fact that THEY have to get organized, because their leaders will not handle this task for them.
I don t want to break it to you, but if we distribute billionnaire money it will just create an inflation. Money doesn t magically solve everything. The problem in society aren t billionnaires, but millionnaires who hold airbnbs and profit from them.
It makes a big difference talking about % or absolute numbers. When comparing a rich person and a normal income, the rich one pays more tax in % and very much more in absolute numbers. When comparing a extremely rich person and a normal income, the rich person may pay a lower % but still way more in absolute numbers.
Yeah, if someone makes a million dollars a year and pays 1% income tax that's $10k. If someone else makes fifty grand a year and pays 5% income tax it's $2.5k. if those two people were the whole tax base, the rich one is paying 80% of all paid income taxes, despite it being a lower nominal percentage, compared to the poorer one only paying 20% even though it has a higher given percentage of income. And we see in real life that the top few percentage of wealthiest people pay almost all the taxes, and the bottom half pay net nearly none. And then hear about how the people ALREADY PAYING ALMOST ALL OF THE TAXES didn't pay "their fair share", whatever that is. Because nobody can define what "fair share" is supposed to mean.
@@michaelsorensen7567 It's a cash grab. People desperately want to conflate income and wealth because that's the only way to squint and view the tax code as not being progressive. In the U.S. anyway. It's obscene for someone that pays no share (as you said nearly half of the US' tax units net out to negative liability) to feel like they have standing to complain about anyone paying any sort of share.
@@michaelsorensen7567 Well hang on. The only fair tax is an absolute one. Divide the total federal budget by the census number and your share is that number times the number of people in your household. Everyone pays the same thing in absolute terms. Don't like your share? Vote for less government. Want more government? Fine but it will cost you. Personally. Voting to spend or not should have individual consequences. All other arrangements create moral hazards one way or the other. A flat tax encourages the same moral hazard as a progressive tax. It induces people buying government for three cents on the dollar to vote for more government because hey, it only costs them three cents on the dollar. Meanwhile someone else is spending ten dollars on the dollar to pick up their slack. Reducing the number of tax bums is better but if we want to talk about fair we need to talk about everyone being responsible for the same dollar amount.
I like how your video has done the opposite of what you intended. I clicd on this video because the title seemed to be anti-taxation. Instead, I got some guy crying that taxes are too low. While definitely not your intention, you actually did provide several arguments for the abolition of taxes.
”totally legal tax evasion” (used in an onscreen text label) is a contradiction in terms. What defines tax evasion is that it is unlawful. If it’s legal, it’s tax avoidance. The material here is strong enough as it is and is undermined by using unnecessarily hyperbolic language.
The idea that there is exactly one meaning of “tax evasion” can only be valid within the context of a legal system based on stare decesis. Even then, the meaning is only shared by subordinate courts. In short, your reasoning is only valid within the context of U.S. statutory law and even then I wouldn’t be surprised if precedent was sufficiently general so as to allow local judges to interpret that meaning with some degree of flexibility… Not to mention that if it came to a jury trial, jurors effectively possess the de jure right to say what the law is via jury nullification, even if in practice juries are selected only on their willingness and/or ignorance to enforce statutory law.
You guys!! The way lawyers keep finding and solving problems no one else had never ceases to amaze me. I was like "OMG the whole video fell apart" and then "Phew, we are save again." 😅
@@Grandude77You do understand they _create_ wealth through their businesses? It benefits everyone. Government and taxes just destroy wealth and produce nothing.
How about what percentage of taxes are paid by each group? I assume, as in most countries, 80% of tax income is from the top 10%. Most in the bottom 50% recieve more than they pay in many countries like france. Need to paint the whole picture. Love your videos btw!
Yep, they always say they want taxes to be fair, they don't realize it would mean their taxes would have to go up. They also don't realize how at least in the us, half of your income tax is paid by your employer, which is on top of the many other ways a company pays tax. Just because a billionaire doesn't pay income tax, does not mean they don't pay tax.
Love the videos too, but I was really wanting to see the same thing in the infographics- what percentage and or $$ amount is paid by each group. I guess I could look it up myself, but it would make this video more complete if it were included.
the problem is that would kill the ideia he is trying to display, I fail to always understand why should group A or B have more tax when it should be why can't have group A or B less tax...
@@rui518 The video clearly is claiming the rich don't pay enough taxes. But yes we should all be focused on how we can increase benefits, decrease taxes, and pay off the debt, which can be done if everyone votes for trump and elon.
The part about the 1990s tax reforms benefitting the bourgeoisie at the expense of the salaried folk is interestingly basically identical to what happened here in Finland around the same time. The same trends in terms of income and wealth inequality can be observed here as well. I suppose these reforms were meant to harmonise our (Finland's and Sweden's) tax regimes as we joined the EU. Maybe someone else could shed some light on this...
Sweden was doing economically very poorly between 1970-1990, when the tax system was distributing a lot, and standard of living was growing very slowly compared to other western nations. This is a really important fact that was completely ignored in the video.
@@Andre-ct4fq Many countries removed similar tax systems in the same period, basicly when one country started, this forced other countries to follow or they'ld lose a lot of money moving to those countries.
Maybe if Sweden stopped supporting comunist regimes they could have focused on dealing with their tax reforms. Angola is still suffering from the communism that Sweden helped to implement there.
Its called neoliberalism and it came to europe after the fall of iron curtian and all ex socialist countries were basically forced onto them Same thing happened in 91 in croatia People call it homeland war, i call it bourgoise revolution
@@BrianReplies It harms savers, yes. Their currency loses value. Inverstors NO! Inflation literally is inflating the money supply. the extra currency typically goes into the property market (Money created for loans) and share markets. The value of those go UP because of inflation.
Naw, the algorithm is reasonably accepting of this kind of politics. It's not going to get wide distribution, but it also won't get suppressed like some other styles (not at all a left/right issue, for clarity).
Snälla, gör denna video på Svenska också. Svenskar behöver förstå detta om vårt eget land, hur de ändrar på saker och vad som hänt de senaste åren. Folk har ingen koll och det gör saken ännu värre varje val. ❤🇸🇪 (Såg din kanal första gången nu. jättebra video! 👍)
Same in Belgium. Employers are moving out to countries where they gave to pay less tax and and where salary costs are lower. Many self employed people (like myself) have to quit. We pay a lot of social security and taxes.... while getting almost nothing in return. Other people, normal salary workers, have more benefits.
Big bourgeoise consolidating small bourgeoise... classic
23 дня назад
if you have a company, you can be a normal salary worker for that company and have the same benefits as the others... didn't get your point... whilst keeping the company benefits (car discounts, copany credit card, etc etc).
23 дня назад
@@tj92834 off course not... But paying with company card lowers the company profits, and you can get back the VAT from those expenses... So double advantage. Off course this is not for everything... But the law is sufficiently broad to include almost anything.
Great video again! You should look into Pillar 2 tax framework this is basically the idea to have a global minimum tax which would prevent these billionaires from threatening what they do to get tax breaks
Sweedish: top 1% owns 36% America: top 1% owns +66% One of these has a happy population, the other has rich slave owners that complain about their slaves not being able to live
Not for long. As with any pyramid scheme, eventually the music stops and someone gets stuck with the bill (‘someone’ is read: same person who is getting the bad end of deal now). The main difference b/w US and Sweden is the Swedes can have a conversation (and likely correction) before the pitchforks come out. Here in the US, it is the opposite.
@@MegaLokopoI think that the total tax revenue is the wrong denominator. The inequality of gains of the top 1%, benefitting from the society and economy overseen by the government, is much larger than the ratio of taxes paid. A tax based on all forms of income and wealth gains, with a progressive increase above some standard of living, would be much more fair. At least in the US, so many forms of gains are taxed at a low rate that the very wealthy pay a much lower effective rate than the middle class.
Very interesting video - thanks for the insight. I have recently moved to Sweden and just got approved for f-tax as a sole trader. I am absolutely not a wealthy person, but Skattevrket wants me to pay 65% tax altogether haha, utter madness!
hear hear. The least you could expect when you have to pay 65% tax is that extremely wealthy have to pay at least as much taxes as you. Unfortunately, that's not the case in Sweden
Don't do business as a sole trader, unless you'll bring in less than roughly 612 000 SEK per year. Anything above that and a limited company (aktiebolag) is the way to go. Also, as a sole trader you're unlimited liable as your own person for any fuck ups, tax problems etc, you as a trader might run into.
Capital tax and wealth tax are an additional tax on something paid for by income that was already taxed. It is a "tax on a tax" and is foundationally unfair and penalizes people who saved, worked hard, were entrepreurial, took risks with investment, and were financially successful. These people, when treated unfairly by the state, have the means to leave and take their businesses, innovation, and capital with them. When that happens, the state spirals into economic turmoil and then decays into social turmoil. Just look at the catastrophic decline of California and New York in the United States. In this video, it would be interesting to use gross $ paid instead of % . At 30% income tax the ceo with annual $2.5 million income pays $750,000 in tax while the $36,000 secretary is usually taxed at a lower rate (say 20%) pays $7,200. They both use the same roads and infrastructure. Most countries tiered tax systems are not even close to "fair" imo.
In a stable society, rich folks benefit massively because they 'use' the wealth spread by the government. Nice to be an entrepreneur but what without educated workers and infrastructure (from internet access to the public transport your workers use to get to work)? Not even to mention cultural diversity and a peaceful environment where nobody needs to do crime to survive. All I want to say is, if all the money is concentrated in a few hands, rich people suffer as well. Don't let me even start about the advantages of social mobility...
Non-salary income is *not* money earned through hard work, literally by definition. Why is it fair to let people earn income on top of income at the expense of everyone else, but not tax on top of tax to keep that money circulating? If you're stuck on an island and one guy hoards all the food, you're obviously going demand that they share. Money is an essential resource that modern society can't function without. Edit: wtf multipost, I hate touchscreens.
@@2koi516you are fundamentally misunderstanding money. Money is more of a measurement. It is a measurement of how much someone has benefited society at large. Non salary income represents payment for risk taking. I put some money forward with no guarantee of seeing any of it back. Whatever profit comes from that is the social benefit that came out of that risk. Because we have free markets no one can be forced to take risks but those risks are necessary for an economy to function so those who take those risks and are successful greatly benefit society as they create jobs for people unwilling to take risks and create products that society finds useful. Someone who earns a salary also benefits society as their labor makes the product that benefits society but this is of less social value than coming up with the product and taking the risk to find is production so they get less money.
It’s almost like wealthy people got that way by creating companies and products and jobs, something governments cannot do. Shocking that they prefer to invest their money in their companies and themselves rather than the black hole of government. In the United States the top 5% of income earners pay 66% of all income taxes. What is your “fair share” of the money they earned?
I am in the top 3% of earners in my country. Almost all of my income comes from trading options on the US market. Why should i pay more in taxes because I generate more income? And why is my productivity demonized? And then when I save and reinvest the large majority of my money, increasing my wealth, and I taxed and demonized for that?
The biggest problem with wealth inequality in my view is the influence that a minority can have in society. That said it seems to be impossible to tax the wealthy effectively
The wealthy are just massively more productive than the average person. Who's more productive, the 130 IQ chemical engineer who innovates and founds his own company, or a horde of average people? And more intelligent people increase productivity enough to free the intelligent from less productive labor before anyone jumps on the "you didn't build that" argument. Wealth per se is not the problem rather it's rent-seeking from bad actors particularly in the political class which will not be solved by giving government bureaucracy more money. Money going into the government is a sure sign the social issues the programs ostensibly address will never be solved and the economic multiplier is less than 1
@TheThreatenedSwan hedgefund managers and Wallstreet types aren't productive at all for humanity. Don't assume someone who's wealthy is automatically brilliant. Sure a chemical engineer with a high iq contributes a great deal more to humanity than the average person but a significant amount of people who collect capital gains are not at all
@@TheThreatenedSwanyou have it completely backwards. The wealthy aren't productive at all, as the video describes, they gain wealth from investing their already existing wealth. They do nothing and gain money. It's an incredibly dumb system and taxing them until they can't do this is a good solution. The government can provide goods and services without needing profits which in itself is an inefficiency in the system because it pools wealth in the hands of those that already have everything. We need to take their wealth until they can't buy rules in their favour which is what we have now.
@@TheThreatenedSwan That is such a silly take. To equate wealth with productivity is just outright idiotic. The highly productive may generally tend to become more wealthy, but the opposite is FAR from true. Much wealth is generational, as another commenter pointed out, the worth of your run-of-the-mill hedgefund managers / speculators to society is close to zero, or in most cases, actually negative.
Sure, women like me who have worked, saved, invested, and delayed our family planning well into our mid-30s to mid-40s, who are good citizens, good spouses, good mothers should just be forced to give EVEN MORE of our money to chronically unemployed single moms who have three children with three different men, who regularly smoke cigarettes and have sex in front of their children. That sounds fair and reasonable, right? Like it’s not providing any perverse incentives to encourage more bad choices and actions, right?
Important caveat for the consumption taxes; they affect everyone, but *not equally*. Consumption does not scale linearly with income beyond a certain point; the wealthy can live very comfortably while only a relatively small portion of their income is spent on consumables. As such, general taxes on consumption have a relatively slight impact on the rich, and such taxes are generally regressive in nature (unless targeted at specific luxury goods, eg. yachts).
So what? They affect everyone equally: according to their consumption. You are effectively saying that because the wealthy don't consume as much as you in proportion to their income, they should be punished. Thus you don't even want a consumption tax but something completely else?
@@edheldude This is a video about the impact of the tax system on wealth inequality. That the wealthy consume less is very relevant to how consumption taxes feed into wealth inequality, and I thus felt it to be an important caveat to the claim within the video that consumption taxes are paid by 'everyone'. Alao yes, I am not fond of consumption taxes. They are one of the more regressive forms of taxation in place, and I favour taxation being progressive. Land value tax would be the best tax imo, but I favour most other forms of taxation over sales taxes. I do not seek to 'punish' the wealthy for spending less of their income; my cost of living is extremely low, so I also spend a much smaller share of my income than most. Consumption taxes are thus quite favourable to my personal finances relative to most other forms of taxation. I just separately recognise that they do not have desirable effects if you are seeking to reduce wealth inequality, as it impacts the wealthy less than the poor.
In the Netherlands politicians protect the board room form tax, because the will one day be selected for these positions....the job carousel as we call it.
Great video for sure, the only criticism I have is one missed opportunity in the lego bricks as money analogy: stacking the bricks on top of each other to show the actual height difference of each group's wealth would help to illustrate the issue even further
That's it. That's why old money and big companies love the Left. They are destroying competition and creating the society they think they're complaining about.
It's really oppression of the poorest. Look, if the gov gets more money from rich people by having lower taxes for them so they don't flee, then by all means, get more money. However... the working-class should get lower taxes too, it's abhorrent that working-class get a punch in the gut from tax-costs just because they can't "flee" like the rich ones may. Instead of fearing that wealth will "flee", why not give more to literally everyone by backing-off the income taxes? Literal cash distribution to everyone that works is so much better at creating equality than some extra tax income for the gov.
That’s why new money right and old money vote left: tradizional american capistalist is to get more richer and social democracy is to mantain your welth from a rick people viewpoint.
I mean this inequality in taxes is the very reason Sweden has more billionaires than those other countries. Without this inequality, billionaires will just move away from Sweden and the govt will have nobody to tax (on the side of the rich)
For that to be true the tax would have to be levied in absolute terms as well. Like a medieval "head tax." Welcome to the future, we have maths here. 🙃
This is what a lot of analysis misses. The percentage of tax burden doesn't matter when you want to find out who pays the most. The total amount of money from each group matters here.
Unfortunately, your discussion of wealth tax completely misses the most important point: the difference between wealth that the owner has produced by his own efforts and wealth that is produced by government and the community, but the private owner is legally entitled to take for himself, especially the unimproved value of land. Taxing the former is unjust; not taxing the latter is unjust. As the Henry George Theorem shows, all government spending on desirable services and infrastructure is a subsidy to landowners. The entire unimproved value of land is NOTHING BUT the market's estimate of how much the owner will be legally entitled to steal from the community by owning the land.
"...and wealth that is produced by government..." ... the government don't product any wealth... only steal... and steal... and steal... the goals, the target, the objective of the government is only steal... through feigning good... thats everybody know what government is not...
Person A starts an engineering business, machining parts for numerous applications like cars, aircraft, motors, etc. He eventually employs 40 people and assists in country's defense and transport infrastructure. Person B just enjoys PlayStation, living with parents and working local jobs like waiter, gas station, etc. Should they make the same money?
It is tragic that the Swedish parliament allows itself to be threatened by someone who lives solely on the work of others without giving very much in return. Spotify does not support the music industry but is another parasitic company that does not contribute to the creative side. This kind of business does not create very many jobs. It is only in the development of the software that there is work. After that, quite a few have to be spent on maintenance and support functions. Of course, they pay no further tax. The company structure and the tax rules let them off the hook. Spotify makes sure to run at a loss all the time and reinvest the earnings so they don't have to pay. Sweden should just let him and Spotify go to hell!
Okay, but companies generally only pay tax on their profits and it simply isn't possible to run at a loss forever. The more usual scam is to claim the company operates from some other location and therefore their profits are taxable there instead. Apple was recently penalised for operating this particular scam. One way to crack down on this sort of thing is simply to deem a company to be operating within any country in which it sells its products and tax that money. The real problem in the music industry has been the majority of record labels. They had a stranglehold and still do. With the advent of streaming they strongarmed the companies offering the service.
@@loganmedia1142 That's not a scam. You can set a legal structure like an LLC pretty much anywhere you want. As an EU citizen you can easily start your company in any member state. If you're running e.g. an online business, why not have it in Bulgaria where you only pay 10% flat tax.
@@edheldude No not everyone does it! There are a lot of people in this that is part of a production. Free market has nothing to do with being a parasite!
I’ve been saying it for years now, “Here in the United States it is unconstitutional for the taxation of income. It states that income is not supposed to be taxed and yet we’ve been illegally taxed for more than a century. The IRS is illegal.”
We don't expect, we know. Do we know evenly spread wealth is good for a society, we know. Do we know how to spread wealth, we know. Do I know why the population of sweden still uses spotify, I don't know?
Great video! Now I just wish we had the same data (current status quo and list recent decades' changes) presented as nicely for other countries as well. :D
The tax system changed over the years because the country was going bankrupt. The problem is when you tax the over achievers they just go somewhere else. The middle class in Northern Europe pay high tax because they choose to give up some of their freedoms to depend on the government.
Totally agree my friend, I just wrote a similar message. If taxes get so bad that you get tought in school that the US is good for corporation for example then most of people wanting to make big businesses would move out in the US to try there
You forget it's possible to impose a law taxing money moved offshore. Nobody becomes wealthy in a bubble. those looking out only for themselves and doing everything to avoid helping the counties that made them wealthy are just greedy traitors.
Rich people are not overachiever. They just feed more on the society and need less equality too keep it that way. Show any scientific data, backed up by a consensus saying rich people do more than anybody else, you'll find none. Stop spreading faire tales that fuel a US way of seeing society.
Don't even try. They just want to hate on the rich and the capitalist, not realizing there will be nothing without them. Wealth redistribution has been tried so many times, and every single time it has failed. People are fixated on the idea that their form of Socialism is going to work. Let me break it to you, it's not going to work.
As far as I am aware Sweden used to be so poor that 1/3 of its population was emigrating in 1800 and early 1900. In 1930s "socialist" policies have been implemented with progressive taxation. this somehow has not ruined the country but resulted in its rapid development into one of the richest countries in the world. Than in 1980 socialist policies went too far and started taxing too much, which affected economy very negatively. And later neoliberals stepped in an they got rid of many taxes on accumulated wealth, capital gains taxes etc. Since than Swedish people get gradually poorer and poorer with inequalities rising and gang warfare spreading in poorest areas.
Literally every country in the West, even the USA The fastest growth in the US have been under Left-wing governments with progressive taxes It took a Left-wing government to end the Great Depression - 3 Republican (Right-wing) presidents couldn't do it
I think you are missing one most important part is that the income tax in Sweden is way TOO high in the first place. If it had a reasonable income tax, then everyone would benefit from having little / no capital gains tax and no wealth tax. Because having a low income tax would allow people to invest residual money into real estate and stock market and retire early. The fight should be not against the billionaire, but against the system which punishes hard work by taxing the crap out of your income
@@Danny-bd1ch You don't need money to unjustly influence democracy. If people aren't allowed to make as much money as they want, why would anyone work harder than they have to in order to max out their pay? If I can make that maximum amount of money in 6 months why should I work the other 6 months of the year?
The solution is to dissolve the overgrown socialist state, leaving only enough government to keep the rule of law, then simplify the tax code. Either get rid of all income/wealth taxes or make it a flat tax. Remove consumption tax on everyday necessities like food, and keep it for everything else. Being wealthy isn't the problem. Being poor is. You can help the poor without taking from the wealthy. Letting the poor keep more of their own money solves this equitably.
Here’s the brutal truth about why this inequality gospel doesn’t make sense: 1. The amount of wealth made by an individual is in direct correlation to the ones impact to the world 2. Law firm partner vs secretary example 1st it assumes that the secretary does not progres in her career for 70 years which is crazy, 2nd the law firm, in order to hire a secretary like Asa has to be earning 10x more in order to keep her job, otherwise its counterproductive and Asa is going to be fired 3. Ultimately all people call the shots for their lives and when you’re making consisten salary like Asa, that comes with the pay check every month, you can calculate that it is not the way to millions, billions or whatever financial amount that pleases you… YET most refuses to do anything with it, because of how pleasant and secure their pay check makes them feel Good videos brother
This story needs to be re-told in every country. Great video. Any chance of turning the music volume a little lower? It is both distracting and hell for people with hearing difficulties. Thanks for the great video.
Sweden's wealth tax was ludicrous. My father used to work there and because his house in the USA hadn't sold, he got taxed on ASSETS OWNED ABROAD with the result that his tax bill came out as higher than his salary.
Very interesting video. But a bit misleading. Take that example of Asa and Bengt, let's assume that there was a flat income tax of 10%, Bengt would pay 250k€/year, while Asa only paid 3.6k€/year, which is 70x less than what Bengt paid (just the opposite perspective of what's shown in the video). That was assuming a flat rate, but actually it's progressive, so Bengt pays a lot more. I'm not defending the rich but not all rich were born rich and not all of them have plans to own/run the world.
So, there is only one issue, and this is the issue with all progressive tax ideals. They confuse Income Tax with wealth, which are totally diferent things. In this video, he says that bengst earns 2500K/year and Asa 36K/year. This is completely misleading. What actually happens is that Bengt earns a substantial amount of his money from shares and investements, not cold hard cash. So even though his wealth increases 2500K, he only pays incime taxes for 300K, because the rest of the money is from non liquid assets like shares and investments. This wealth is extremely difficult to tax. The problem lies in the fact the assets value changes based on the amount sold If we tax all billionaires based on their wealth, they would be forced to sell their assets to pay the 2200K difference. The socialist would be quite happy to have enforced their egualitarian society, but they forget that if the market is flooded with shares of billionaires that need the money to pay 250K in taxes, those shares will sharply drop in value, forcing them to sell even more, droping the value further. The first most immediate result would be a crash in every company stock price, followed by massive layoffs (so now Asa is out of a job, Yay!). The second result is a great disdain for all investment opporunities. Because since you'll be taxed based on the wealth instead of wether or not the product generates value, things like owing homes would be economically inviable (imagine you had to pay 10% of your home value every year). This would again force people to sell their homes, lowering the value, crashing the house prices. You then have the issue that now that owing a home is essentially the same as paying rent, most people would end up paying rent. This would make rent prices go up Eventually, the rent prices would up as high or higher than the property taxes. This would make the few wealthy people that remain to keep owning and renting their property, to first cover the wealth tax, then make a profit for their own home. Congratulations. Now Bengt instead of living in a mansion lives in Asa's home, and Asa rents a smaller property to Bengt, at a realitively higher percentage than the tax cost to maintain that house.Yay! I made the example with homes, but this would also apply to any other investment like a startup, so no new jobs will be created. This is why wealth were pushed to be abolished. The alternative is capital gains tax, but the problem again is that its a tax that applies once the asset is sold, meaning if he doesnt sell them, he isnt taxed. That makes it so he looks like he earns 2500K, but pays just 30K in taxes instead of 250K. But I dont think there is any other to prevent this that doesn invokve destroying the investmeny market, and by proxy, millions of jobs.
@figueiredomike did you not understand that Bengt doesn’t only pay income taxes? his income is not the same as his salary due to his capital income which is taxed lower than salary. so he ends up paying a smaller share of his income in taxes - it is that easy.
No they won't. They will threaten to, like a little fat kid up the park threatening to take his ball home because you won't play his rules. But they won't because they are greedy and they want YOUR money. And guess what happens if they do leave? Opportunity! Nature abhors a vacuum and someone else will step in. The world doesn't end if rich people leave, that's just a rich person lying to you so he can keep taking your money.
Great video. I suggest putting subtitles in English (though I'm Brazilian) when you highlight text or play a video clip, just showing the gist of the information, in order to keep the audience engaged in those sections.
This is a lovely presented video. Just a tip though, the video is presented in English but there were no English translations of any written or spoken Swedish during the video. Thank you for sharing the interesting state of affairs in your country brother.
Actually tax evasion is not a problem, if you implement a wealth tax correctly because most of the wealth that the super rich own is concentrated in assets, that are local (like companies, real estate or land) and cannot be moved anywhere. And getting to that wealth also seems entirely possible as we have seen during the russian invasion in ukraine, when governments all over europe confiscated the assets of russion oligarchs. The problem is currently that most people don't know about this important issue and there are no democratic majorities pushing for wealth taxes. And one more thing the Bengt Jonnson guy likely does not need to work at all, because if he invests his wealth of for example €50mio at a market rate of 5%, he will be making his €2.5mio a year without doing anything. This gets even worse with billionares, with €1bn you make a €1mio every week just by investing conservatively into the markets, but likely you can invest very differently with those kind of sums and get even higher returns. Very good visualizations again in this video ; )
Doing nothing = providing liquidity for investments and carrying the risk? You do understand people need reinvested money for new businesses and development?
@@edheldude Yes investments are always necessary and can be extremely helpful. However if you look at how billionaires invest, the problems reveal themselves. Very little of the money will be used to push small startups without any personal strategy to increase the billionaires power. Instead it is just way less risky to crush smaller companies or influence entire markets because as long as the authorities don't step in (and they rarely can) you can create revenue very predictably. And if authorities step in it is rather in not allowing certain transactions than actually punishing behavior that is very harmful. Even the authorities are through political leadership at their mercy and can be pressured at any time with job losses or local investment stops. I recommend watching the channel how money works for some examples of how billionaires invest. Once you have very large sums of money investments can work very differently. So there might be very little risk to carry and the investments very often harm the society at large.
@@edheldude In the case of just investing broadly into markets to get the 5% interest, you'd also just buy stocks that have likely IPOed a long time ago. So there is no liquidity provided directly and it would not change the markets overall. But this obviously does not use the power the billionaire has optimally, so it's not really a good investment strategy for them to just invest broadly. This would be literally doing nothing and watching the money increase
@@pericvlor Most big entrepreneurs just want to solve big problems of humanity and create something cool. Money is just a tool, and an energy to make things happen.
@@edheldude Ideally yes, in practice this is sadly often not the case. But humans have a tendency to improve things so maybe we can solve these problems one day.
This is a world wide trait, that exists almost everywhere, but this system and way of control, is not sustainable and is on verge of collapse, simply because the money that's being created, or printed is in excess, of the actual natural resources that are available, which of course are not shared evenly. Also everything taken from nature by force, will have to be paid back, at some future time, which is already starting happen, in the form of natural and environmental disasters.
You'd have to define what you mean by taking from nature by force. The current system that is expanding inequality is definitely not sustainable, but we probably cannot simply let it collapse. Undoubtedly if it gets that far the ultra-wealthy will actually still be alright and everyone else will bear the brunt of the chaos. An example would be the 2008 crisis. The majority of wealthy people didn't just walk away from that unscathed, but used their wealth and market manipulation to get even richer while ordinary people suffered the consequences.
Man, it's good to know that other countries have to go through this same crap as the US does. I was beginning to think that exceptionalism claptrap was actually real. Admittedly, I've long thought our idea of exceptionalism meant that we were somehow excepted from learning the lessons of history, but... still... good to see that other peoples are getting screwed over by the same kind of greedy mofos in their countries.
@@edheldude It's just balancing the books on the economy. The money amount is finite, so if the national budget has a deficit then the money is held elsewhere. Or, to use a different metaphor, taxes ensure that the money flows where it needs to rather than pooling up behind the dams of the rich. However, you needn't worry your pretty little head too much about the efficacy of government taxing the rich, for the rich have bought out government long since.
@@angelsy1975 That's why old money and the left work together. They both want a society that stops competition so old money is not disrupted. If you wanted to reduce poverty, you'd support more economic mobility and help people produce wealth. Also, money is not finite, not rare, and is constantly created through loans. With good enough idea or story I can right now go to the bank and they'll create tens or hundreds of thousands for me. If you have proof of good business skills, there's no limit to the money they'll create for you. That's the bank's business - they _want to give money_ if they know you can pay it back.
@@edheldude Funny how this comment of yours was blocked and I only just now realized you had replied to me. Hitting "sort by" newest comments seems to reveal missing comments. Of course, then you have to locate the thread the comments were made in - good thing my original was only posted a day ago, else that could have been quite a tedious search, lol. At any rate, snark aside, I don't have enough buy-in to really continue this conversation, beyond to say that you're correct about the fractional banking system "creating" money on the balance sheet to be paid back in "real" money - and that in effect is what taxes are, replevying existing monies from out in the wild... thus, balancing the sheet of the economy. Monies held in pool, untaxed and otherwise unused, are effectively seigniorage in private practice, lol, like all those two-dollar bills that get handed out at Christmas and go on to never be spent. Kind of like how the "new money" corporate overlords must rely on loans to survive, using their stock value as collateral, since their real income may in fact be very low - especially if they aren't offering dividends on their company's stock. Always seemed like a bad sign if a company has a high valued stock but low or no dividend. But ah well, maybe you'll see my comment too, eventually. 🙂
So basically, the state taxes you on money you make, when you spend that money, when you sell stuff to make money, and on some of the things you already bought just for owning it. Seems like the state is against the building of wealth.
@@asandax6Not at all.. having more means more concerns.. People who had realized that.. procure a balanced easy life. You cam bet that 2 out of 3 individuals would rather have just enough resources without issues.. than a lot with the included target on their backs.
@@asandax6 "Everyone wants more and more" Nonsense. Many just want enough to be able to provide a reasonably comfortable and worry-free life for themselves and their family.
Taxes themselves are unfair, it’s not fair to force someone to pay more just because they have more. After all they get the same or even less social benefits from the government. And they are less likely to rely as heavily on government services as people who pay less. I get that in practice, there is a need to tax people. But talking about fairness in this context is just plain wrong.
You reached of the edge, almost fall in rabbit hole... but lack a push... to you is needed Tax always is a Theft... Tax is a Theft always... Tax is a Theft...
Obviously. You really think 90% of the population is so dumb they don't realize that? I have 3 degrees served in Iraq. I came home and applied for thousands of jobs. In ten years I got 3 interviews. I'm done chasing the carrot. Fuck capitalism. The harder you work the more you pay, until you get to the 10%. The you get paid.
The question what is left to spend in asset. For some negligible nothing. You always spend the first 1500€ (or Swedish krone equivalent) o necessities, also a billionaire.
how can people like such a write and like such a comment?! people need to pay rent food water. many have not much money left, the time and knowledge to invest whats left over, saving a bit is also no bad idea and having made some money by never spending beyond the absolute necessary won’t make you happy in the end. not everyone has so much access money lol
Bra jobbat, bra video kvalité och intressant innehåll, jag har prenumererat! Det är sjukt hur Sverige har blivit en skatteparadis för de rika, vi måste fixa det!
This issue is oversimplified. Tax rates look great if you already have an established business that one isn't putting money into, however, for someone who is about to take taxed earned income and then invest that, the capital gain taxes look insane.
The part that I believe is very problematic is the Spotify example. The problem persists with banks. If a person with a few hundred dollars said they were going to close their account because they were not getting what they want, the bank does not care that much. However, if it was someone with a few hundred thousand, the bank suddenly really cares and will bend over to please them. I've seen it plenty of times in banks. The staff at the bank always seems a bit irritated by it, but it shows how having money gives you power on a more local level. And like the example with Spotify, these people, that are unhappy in a bank, will threaten to leave and take all their money elsewhere. These people know that they can use their wealth as leverage to get what they want. The wealthy get benefits at banks for simply having money. These people do not spend any more in banking, but instead less. They get perks, free things that are normally paid by those who are not as wealthy as them, and special treatment. It is cheaper to be rich than poor.
There is a fundamental flaw here. Billionaires nearly always do not have liquid assets, they own companies. You don’t wanna tax this part of their wealth. These companies create jobs for hundreds or even thousands of people who need them to put food on the table and they provide products or services for people. By taxing this company heavily people will lose their jobs and prices will go up.
This is always the trope, but you know what has never happened, this scenario. Companies will adjust and stay in business to further their own interests or sell to private equity. Businesses are in operation for shareholders, not the employees, which are a resource, not the reason the business exists. It’s never, ever, about the people.
The really rich own share in a company...an asset that is liquid because they can borrow gainst it and sell it, but can also tax shelter. Most investors don't run the company, they pay the CEO, often obscene compensation to do that. If the company goes bankrupt investors will lose some but it will be a tax write off and usually they are diversified. The CEO walks away with a golden parachute and no consequence, and the workers get laid off. If the company does well everyone, except the workers, automatically makes more. If you regulate and foster competition more people make more and the very rich make less....they are still very rich. If you use that extra money to invest in the working class the middle class grows and the economy,( because the middle class spends the money), and by default tax income grows. If the rich have most of the money it sits in their portfolio. The economy grows but only at the top and tax revenue and the middle class .
If these companies are paying so little that their full time employees qualify for assistance, then the owners need to be taxed to make up the difference
You know what should piss you off? It's that if you have a paycheck of $2300, then you probably produce a value for your employer of at least 4 times that. But your bosses and the owners of your employer steals almost all of that -- and you know what, they pay LESS tax on that than you do on your small share that you get as a consolatory salary. THAT should piss you off
@@TheMarketExitLol. Good thing people who argue that way are never doing it for their own interest and always just for the workers. They definitely don't want to get in on a grift themselves.
@@TheMarketExitThe employer has more scarce skills thus why they get more money. You also know they pay far more total in taxes. People who argue for redistributionism generally do so because of malicious envy not because they're good people
@@TheThreatenedSwan in the US the 1.5 million richest families have an average wealth over ten million dollars. Those people don't have to work at all, they just sit on the nest egg and live like kings on part of the asset appreciation. For every smart leader in that group there are dozens who don't do a damn thing. Janitors and grocery clerks work harder.
Thank you! that's a great video! I will be looking for more. As explained though, meanwhile companies are able to move abroad looking for lower taxes I think the tendency will be an excruciating blackmail into do what I want or I leave and who pays the price will be directly workers and indirectly the rest of the country. I've seen the same blackmail in Spain and they are always given what they want (no matter who rules). Unless global taxes are introduced for global companies there is nothing that can be done I fear.
He owns 7% of a company with a $72bn market cap. It is very easy to turn that into real money. Back in April, for instance, he sold 650,000 company shares for $179 million.
Big companies like uber, Spotify, facebook. Could go for years if not decades without profit. In first years they grow on credit and shares. When they are big af they could do some minor change as start seling some premium Access or higher fees and they Would make bilions. So he is bilionare from only promise of that his company Would make profit somewhere in the future
watching this , I realize I would be a dictator . Because I think the proper response to a billionaire threatening to move their business might be .... well ... ask yourself what would happen to a billionaire if they made that threat in Russia or China .
Ppl with the most power must accept the most responsibility. If capitalists aren't willing to take the responsibility, they shouldn't be expected to reap the rewards.
that's a great incentive for people to build wealth, I'm sure you would have people working really hard to become rich under your system... oh right they DON'T and it all falls apart. history has shown this over and over again.
@gusmc2220 I mean , China isn't doing too bad . If you are going to use a nation's infrastructure to get rich , you kind of owe it to your country to pay taxes on your business . Property tax on you home however I disagree with . You shouldn't be forced to work if you own a cabin in the woods and just want to chill .
What would fair taxes be? the top 25 percent of people pay %100 of net taxes in the us. AKA the bottom 75 percent in people get more money out of the government than they put in. How is that fair?
So if the top 10% provide a product to 90% of the population and that bottom 90% all give a presentage of their money to buy that product, it only makes sense that this top 10% are so wealthy. They have virtually the entire population using a product they created. Scenario. 10 people with 10 dollars live on an island. 1 person knows how to make hammocks out of palm tree leafs. He charges 2 dollars a hammock. After selling everyone a hammock he becomes the wealthiest person on the island. He has $28 dollars and everyone else has $8. Should he be penelized for his success and wealth? There has to be a way to lower financial concentration without penalizing the rich. Concentrate on more incentivized approaches to encourage the wealthy to contribute to charities, education systems, prog4ams that advance medicine and other techbologies that benefit society. Perhaps that's what they are doing, but all i hear in the US is bitter people demand that rich people pay more taxes to the government.
@@marcosteiner3619 well, even if Its true that a very high inequality ratio results in de facto feudalism, the ratio is not that high, and Its been steadily decreasing since actual feudalism. Which seems to be the case as long as basic human rights are respected. The only thing keeping feudalism in place in Its days was the king limiting nobility titles, but then as technology progressed and rulers failed to regulate It, the power eventually fell down to the people. Thats what our only concern should be, to keep intact the basic human rights.
Bra video och har själv sett detta under senaste åren. Du borde göra en video på isk konton och vem det gynnar mest. Har inte hört några andra länder som har det eller något liknade (kan ha på tok fel)
you should be only bothered of 90% paying a lot...everyone should keep his money rich or poor...no such thing as ineqauality unless you are entitled person ...work for it
Hang on a minute, its not like 90% of people aren't working... What kind of work did those 1%ers do to earn their wealth? How come that kind of work deserves to be taxed less than the work of the lower class? Why does the CEO's work deserve to be payed that much more than his secretary? In an economy without any wealth redistribution, the wealth moves up the ladder and more and more of it ends up in the hands of fewer and fewer people at the top. That shouldn't be so hard to see. Is the single mom working 70 hours a week while caring for her kids not working hard enough? Why does she have to work just as hard as (if not harder than) her CEO for 1/1,000th the pay? The idea that how hard you work determines how much you earn is simply untrue and I know you know that. Also the idea of taxes is kinda great, as a people we agree to pool together a small amount of our individual resources into a central authority who we elected, who uses that wealth to do things for the good of the collective. Providing vital services that everybody gets to benefit from just for being a member of their society, no matter the conditions they might individually be facing.
@@ryanconners3048the comment of someone that is informed and probabily has studied microeconomics and macroeconomics, vs the comment of someone that doesn’t knows what is he talking about 😂🙌👏
@@ryanconners3048 which problemm you solved that turned into a profitable business and employed people ? none you work for a paycheck, go start a company that provides value and give it all to the employees and goverrment while you are at it
I dislike taxes for one main reason: the government requires individuals to calculate their own taxes and imposes heavy penalties for mistakes. While I have no problem paying taxes as a US citizen, it seems strange to me that I have to do the paperwork when the government already has all the necessary information.
I don't regret the financial mistakes I've made in the past, as they've all taught me valuable lessons. However, my biggest misstep was planning my finances without consulting a licensed financial advisor.
I sought the guidance of a financial counselor, and as I near retirement, their advice has proven invaluable. I was initially concerned that compound interest on index funds wouldn’t suffice since I started investing later. It's quite amusing to realize that I’ve outperformed colleagues with more investment experience, having gained over $186k tax-free.
@@williamDonaldson432 This is definitely significant! Do you have any recommendations for professionals or advisors I could contact? I really need guidance on proper portfolio allocation.
Rebecca Lynne Buie is the coach who guides me. With years of experience in the financial markets, her strategies have worked well for me and contributed to my success. She offers clear entry and exit points for the securities I focus on
Thank you for the tip. I found your coach online and conducted my due diligence before scheduling a call. Based on her resume, she appears to be highly proficient.
Great Video ! BUT . . .Sweden's wealth inequality is tiny compared to the United States where the top 1% essentially own the Government and funnel the massive Federal Budget directly into their coffers !
Depending on the region and date 4profit orgs either own the gov or are the gov.
Same goes for my country Denmark, where your LEGO comes from. 80% middle class country (I think the UK only 39% and the US only 50%). We pay high taxes, but our roads and infrastructure look nice and the population is very satisfied. Breaking up private income and outcome, Danes don't pay more in the end in a life circle. And you don't finance through living in debts. Your kids education doesn't depend on your income. Universal healthcare. Less pressure due to social security nets, -happier populations in Scandinavia.
Wrong. Sweden's wealth inequality is higher than the USA. If you don't believe me look up the GINI wealth equality by country.
@@stevo728822thanks for making me look this up, you might want to look into this for yourself.
Sweden's wealth inequality is the result of old money. Money that has been in the hands of the same families for hundreds of years goes back to Feudalism.
America's wealth is largely new money that has arisen in the last few decades bringing with it technological breakthroughs such as smart phones and electric cars.
Not really a fair comparison.
What people don't understand it's a global issue it's not just one country like it's not just the US.
What people don't understand is the economy and don't bother to learn.
It's how jobs get created. And it's being painted like it's greed. The wealth exists in having built all these opportunities for people to work toward things others want.
So you think trickledown economics has worked?
@@juancilliers8710 There is no limit to how much wealth can be created. A business that uses land, labour, materials and resources is worth multiple times the sum of all it's parts. If you stripped out all the 'Good Will' value and just valued the land, materials and machinery then you would have a more balanced distribution of 'wealth.' The Wealthy are those that create these efficient use of existing resources and have them valued on the stock markets at 20-50 times the base cost. Yes, there are loads of elites living off government contracts and this should be stopped but blaming creators from creating more wealth is collectivist nonsense. Do the vast majority of people have access to more real world resources today than yesterday. If the answer is yes, then the system is working, if no, then the system is hoarding the resources. The numbers are a misdirection at best used by toxic ideologies to create a state of FEAR by creating the illusion that we live in scarcity rather than unlimited abundance that is only limited by peoples lack of imagination and creativity to make things with the resources around them. Govern-Minds (mentis=Mind) control the masses via FEAR, False Evidence Appearing Real. You can only control what you Create - 10 Rules of Commerce
It's also just how math works. If you break it down into percentiles the lowest 1% would have to own at least a little less than the 2nd lowest percentile, so on and so forth. If you had to now assign numbers to this what percent of the wealth should the poorest 1% own to make this work? Is it going to be something like 0.5% of the wealth? Then the next 1% own 0.51%? If you end that sequence with the top 1% owning 2% of the wealth then it becomes you can only become 4 times as rich as your poorest citizen (kind of).
These also need to be adjusted for age. Because I think people that worked for 40 years should be at least 40 times as wealthy as someone that has only worked 1 year. (a 65 year old vs a 19 year old)
I am not swedish , But came across your video about Private equity So I explored your channel. I love the content and quality of your videos. I hope you will achieve success very soon here on youtube, Just give some of your focus on going viral and figure out to beat the algorithm.
Regards,
Your new loyal subscriber.
Thank you very much for the kind comment!🙏
And, you're right, I probably should try to be "smarter" with the algorithm etc.
Cheers!
Absolutely. This channel is great!
Another new subscriber and loving your content and productions🤗
All taxation is theft!
Were you wishing him to be rich?? What a bad person you are...
It sucks that it's not just our economy, our whole culture is becoming more Americanized 😴
You forgot to include the Lego graphic of who pays what percentage of tax revenues collected.
True. The top 1% are responsible for 45% of the tax revenue, which is already proportionately higher than the wealth percentage they own. When the fuck will it be considered "fair"?
But it gets worse because heavy taxation is absolutely trickled down into the prices of the goods and services their companies provide, which effectively makes the poor poorer by making the things they need to buy more expensive.
Taxation is a tool of incentive, and when you tax the people who are better off, you are literally saying as a nation that you don't want your people to be better off. It is as simple as that.
I dare say that a country with zero taxes for the rich would have no poverty within a generation.
@@matheusdardenne in what universe does the absence of tax becomes a more prominent incentive to be rich other than, you know, wanting to have a decent livelihood and not wanting to live in poverty?
The richest people pays more tax by percentage than the poorest and it should be that way. Just for a very crude analogy, do you expect two persons making $10k/year and $10M/year to both pay 1% tax? The first one would barely have any left to have a decent living while the other still have so much more to spend for a luxurious life.
And I agree with your point that heavy tax for corporations could negatively impact the poor. But that's where wealth tax could be effectively used to put the burden more on personal wealth rather than companies
@rexygama7697
Taxation is the government taking away your money and giving NOTHING worthwhile in return, not that a return would justify the theft in the first place. It makes it harder for poor people to rise above their status because taxes are progressive, meaning that the more they climb the wealth brackets, the harder it becomes to keep climbing because rates increase. The progressive tax system, thus, creates this "thermal equilibrium" where the majority of people are stuck just below the middle class.
First of all, both are currently paying over 80% of what they earn in direct or indirect taxation in my country. Second, I want both of them to pay fucking NOTHING, because there is NOTHING being provided back with that money being stolen from them. Third, if taxation is impossible to abolish, then yes, a 1% rate would be FAIR, because who makes 10k a year will be paying 100, and who makes 100k a year will be paying 1000, I think even you can understand that 1000 is more than 100.
@@rexygama7697
Why, instead of creating a wealth tax, don't you force your government to reduce their spending and to live within its means?
Why, instead of stealing money from the poor, squandering half of it in corruption and inefficiencies, to only then provide mediocre services back to the people, don't you let people keep their money so they won't be poor in the first place?
@@matheusdardenne tax revenue contributes to a substantial amount of share in countries GDP. In Sweden it's around 41% in 2022. It goes to public healthcare, infrastructure, military, government officials that keeps the country running, etc. You can say it's a subscription for being a citizen of a country, where in return, you get all the benefits of citizenship.
I can see where you are headed with "stuck in the middle class" argument, but it's kinda the "intended" side effect that taxation aims. Tax will indirectly distribute wealth among populations and reduce economic inequalities. Of course too much of it can be harmless and even hinder economic progress.
As for your last point, I would argue that both should NOT be taxed the same (by percentage). Tax exemption, for example in income tax, should be applied so that people earning below a certain threshold pay less or zero percentage of their income for taxes. Progressive income tax is necessary so that the lower middle class people don't have to be burdened as much since they would still have to struggle to meet basic needs. Living on 99k/year is way more comfortable than 9,9k/year. So why not just make it so that one person gets 98,9k/year while the other gets 10k/year (no taxes). In both cases, the government collect 1,1k. I bet the first person would barely notice the difference while the second one would be very graceful to have an extra 100 to buy some groceries :)
Great visualisation! I really think the Lego figures make the problem so much more concrete.
Plastic.
There's no problem. This is how system work, and people's disparate competencies result in unequal wealth.
@@edheldude yet the ability of people to move upwards through the wealth categories is less then ever before, so competencies aren't the deciding factor. It's harder and harder than previous recent decades to make a lot of money if you don't start out with a lot of money already.
@@Ocker3 I think people are just more passive, less autonomous, more mentally and physically sick, and many businesses require more intellect and character. Left and old money are also building more obstacles for people but in reality most people don't try to be financially autonomous and try to build a business.
On the flipside, this also means there's less compentent competition. I'm on my third business and it feels like the bar is super low.
Watched two videos and subbed. Nice videos, although not exactly new information, but very professionally done. There cannot be enough channels spreading the information you talk about and you do a great job in making it easy to digest and understand.
Only one little addition. Consumption tax, which you glossed over pretty much, is also a deeply unfair tax. A single person who is extremely wealthy will never ever use much of their wealth to actually consume (if they even do it at all and do not circumvent it by covering their expenses through companies they own). So any consumption tax is, like income tax, a tax that hits the poor much harder then the wealthy in relation to the respective overal wealth and in regards to the disposable income that is left after taxation.
Was looking through the comments to see if someone else had already made that point! Many people think of flat taxes like consumption tax as "fair", when the exact opposite is true. And I think it's quite universally accepted among economists that giving money to poor people is great for the economy, since they (have to) spend most of it, while money that goes to/stays with rich people is MUCH more likely to get transferred abroad or - best case - sit in a bank account/property where it accrues minimal tax revenue.
@@ChocookieMonster It is also a big difference in the economy. Money given to the poor ends up almost entirely in domestic businesses usually. So it is an indirect investment into small businesses in your own country, strengthening the domestic economy. Which is the actual backbone for everything else.
you forget that taxes are imposed to provide and maintain common services like roads etc. These services are used more than 90% by the 90% class you mention. So your notion of taxation is just another Marxist poppycock idea. Taxation without consent is tantamount to robbery. it funds kleptocracy, corruption, and government fascism. your rather simpleminded notion that the rich somehow can be taxed to make society fairer is just another idiotic argument made by Marxists. Hasn't 100 years of failure taught you something? One gets better results by restricting government power and reinventing the imposition of forced levies like taxes.
@@manfredkandlbinder3752Only if you consider Amazon to be local.
@@ChocookieMonsterMany jurisdictions don't apply consumption taxes to the basic necessities of life (food, shelter, etc.). The poor tend to spend a lot higher per centage of their income on the necessities of life and thus pay much less in consumption taxes. Also, at least some jurisdictions have "luxury taxes" on higher ticket items.
If you study macroeconomics, you find that consumption taxes is one of the better ways of taxing, as income taxes tend to discourage people from working harder and earning more.
Politicians that work for the rich and not the people ... what a shocker
People lose track of how BIG a billion is. If dollars were grains of salt, then avg. lifetime earnings in the US (~$2 mil) will fill a coffee mug. A billion fills a bathtub.
@@tj92834 "that is either private owners or it's the government"
Worker Co-Ops: [has entered the chat]
🙃
@@tj92834 ... also... Just because the economic structures of the 21st century make billionares a stochastic inevitability that's no reason to think they are "worth" more than anyone else.
Financializing human value (also known as "treating people like objects") is fundamentally immoral.
... and the current economic structures are subject to change.
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.
@@tj92834 The economic structures of the 21st century make billionares a stochastic inevitability. There's no reason to think they are "worth" more than anyone else.
Financializing human value (also known as "treating people like objects") is fundamentally immoral.
... and the economic structures are subject to change.
@tj92834 almost true, but not quite. I can name a few companies that have been highly successful, without making any single person super rich. Some of the wolds leading companies in their field are cooperatives, some are state owned. Area, Danish Crown, Orsted, DSV, and Wattenfalla, just to name a few.
Other leading companies are owned by shareholders without any single owner becoming super rich.
Love the production quality and clear explanations! Only one thjnf stops me from linking and subscribing: Please add *sources* in the description! I believe its a dangerous trend that there are so many video essays on youtube doing great stuff, but not providing the evidence for their claims. Thanks!
it's the same here in austria. we had a pretty good tax system up until 1990. but right now, if you work for a company with a good income you'll easily pay 40% of your income in taxes. if you instead own said company you can hoard all your income in a holding company and pay 0%. only when you take money out of the holding you pay a meager 25%. if you also happen to own another company abroad you can shuffle that money around and pay 0% taxes in total.
wow
Yes and we used to have an inheritance tax, but now whenever it gets proposed (even when the proposal is for a progressive tax rate with no tax on the first million (!!)) people freak out because they irrationally fear they might be affected if they manage to save up another 990.000€ and die - stoked by the tabloid press, of course
This is not exactly accurate. Corporations in Austria pay 25 % on all their gains (business tax "KöSt"), and another 27,5 % on all money that is taken out of the companies (capital gains tax "KeSt"), so business owners in Austria pay more than half of their profits in taxes.
@@123jakob1234 except if they don't make gains because you pay the gains into a holding which owns the company. then you don't pay KöSt at all, becaue your company doesn't make any profit, instead you only pay KeSt when you take your money out of your holding. therefore you can accumulate massive amounts of money and assets tax free if you keep everything in your holding. you can use the profits in the holding to buy real estate or stocks or whatever (or pay back loans) and don't pay a single cent in tax because your holding owns all those things instead of you as a person.
oh, and KöSt has been lowered to 23% since 2024.
and we're not even talking about Gruppenbesteuerung yet.
@@123jakob1234 The money taken out of a company doesn't have to be a gain though.
The company can just grow and invest it's income, so it doesn't have to pay the 25%.
This leaves only the 27,5% if the assets have stayed in Sweden.
Expertly produced, you deserve more traction.
Like Moskou's nuclear blackmail, we should also not give in to threats for a race to the bottom.
Thanks!
Why do content creators never mention the absolute amount of tax paid by the billionaires. Or the total amount of tax share paid by billionaires. I suspect the rich pay more than their fair share in absolute amount. Maybe 1% of billionaires pay 30 % of total tax paid? Do better research please.
@beerharmien Because A) if you got 10 billion, paying 1 billion in taxes has no impact on you. If you got 100 bucks, paying 10 means you go hungry.
And B) if you got 10 billion, your money makes money. After paying 1 billion in taxes, next year you'll still have 11. If you only got 100 bucks, losing 10 takes away from your ability to invest in the future. That's why poverty is a vicious circle and inequality increases.
@@ericdane7769 That’s not my question. For fair reporting, content creators should also present how much taxes are paid by the top 1% compared to the 99%. In my country, only 3% of people pay income taxes, and people are still complaining.
@@ericdane7769 Now to address your points.
For A)
Are we talking about wealth or income?
If you are taxing wealth, that's a communist system. The rich will have to start selling assets when they reach $1mil, $10mil or $100mil? They will never become rich in the first place. No Spotify, no Tesla, no free Google or RUclips because nobody will bother.
If we are talking income then yes, 10% is nothing but nobody makes 10B a year income consistently.
And B)
That's the whole point of amassing wealth right? Your money makes money and your capital doesn't get shrunk by inflation. That's the whole point of retirement planning also.
I agree, poverty is a vicious cycle. Everyone must be given an "opportunity" to escape poverty but only if they act on it. Or else, you are just creating handout nation.
Love the quality content. Hope your stuff will gain traction.
I'm not optimistic.
People against unjust wealth is a global effort.
It should be, but because of rich peoples successful propaganda, the issue is getting worse
@@zombi3lif3 being that it is now becoming normalized in mainstream thought, I think we are on our way to progress. However, it does rely on people waking up to the fact that THEY have to get organized, because their leaders will not handle this task for them.
Quit your job, oh wait they pay for them, guess you cant.
I don t want to break it to you, but if we distribute billionnaire money it will just create an inflation. Money doesn t magically solve everything. The problem in society aren t billionnaires, but millionnaires who hold airbnbs and profit from them.
@@thatundeadlegacy2985so you like being a billionaire’s b**ch?
It makes a big difference talking about % or absolute numbers. When comparing a rich person and a normal income, the rich one pays more tax in % and very much more in absolute numbers. When comparing a extremely rich person and a normal income, the rich person may pay a lower % but still way more in absolute numbers.
Yeah, if someone makes a million dollars a year and pays 1% income tax that's $10k. If someone else makes fifty grand a year and pays 5% income tax it's $2.5k. if those two people were the whole tax base, the rich one is paying 80% of all paid income taxes, despite it being a lower nominal percentage, compared to the poorer one only paying 20% even though it has a higher given percentage of income.
And we see in real life that the top few percentage of wealthiest people pay almost all the taxes, and the bottom half pay net nearly none. And then hear about how the people ALREADY PAYING ALMOST ALL OF THE TAXES didn't pay "their fair share", whatever that is. Because nobody can define what "fair share" is supposed to mean.
@@michaelsorensen7567 It's a cash grab. People desperately want to conflate income and wealth because that's the only way to squint and view the tax code as not being progressive. In the U.S. anyway.
It's obscene for someone that pays no share (as you said nearly half of the US' tax units net out to negative liability) to feel like they have standing to complain about anyone paying any sort of share.
@@BTrain-is8ch and it's all the people crying about "fair share" who refuse flat tax with no deductions, which seems counterintuitive
@@michaelsorensen7567 Well hang on. The only fair tax is an absolute one. Divide the total federal budget by the census number and your share is that number times the number of people in your household. Everyone pays the same thing in absolute terms. Don't like your share? Vote for less government. Want more government? Fine but it will cost you. Personally. Voting to spend or not should have individual consequences.
All other arrangements create moral hazards one way or the other. A flat tax encourages the same moral hazard as a progressive tax. It induces people buying government for three cents on the dollar to vote for more government because hey, it only costs them three cents on the dollar. Meanwhile someone else is spending ten dollars on the dollar to pick up their slack.
Reducing the number of tax bums is better but if we want to talk about fair we need to talk about everyone being responsible for the same dollar amount.
@@BTrain-is8chhaving a say is an inherent right void of wealth or input.
I like how your video has done the opposite of what you intended. I clicd on this video because the title seemed to be anti-taxation. Instead, I got some guy crying that taxes are too low. While definitely not your intention, you actually did provide several arguments for the abolition of taxes.
”totally legal tax evasion” (used in an onscreen text label) is a contradiction in terms. What defines tax evasion is that it is unlawful. If it’s legal, it’s tax avoidance. The material here is strong enough as it is and is undermined by using unnecessarily hyperbolic language.
How about you don't apply USA technical law vocabulary to Swedish law, yeah?
The idea that there is exactly one meaning of “tax evasion” can only be valid within the context of a legal system based on stare decesis. Even then, the meaning is only shared by subordinate courts.
In short, your reasoning is only valid within the context of U.S. statutory law and even then I wouldn’t be surprised if precedent was sufficiently general so as to allow local judges to interpret that meaning with some degree of flexibility…
Not to mention that if it came to a jury trial, jurors effectively possess the de jure right to say what the law is via jury nullification, even if in practice juries are selected only on their willingness and/or ignorance to enforce statutory law.
Just like usury is redefined, you mean? What are you Gods chosen people?
Yeshua condemns you!
You guys!!
The way lawyers keep finding and solving problems no one else had never ceases to amaze me.
I was like "OMG the whole video fell apart" and then "Phew, we are save again."
😅
Tax Evasion is defined as a crime but it also describes the simple fact.
I wanted to see the breakdown of how much taxes is collected from each group using the Legos
Yes, but that would make his point void!
That's be great!
@@mikatuI bet it wouldn't. You think they are paying 74% of the tax burden? I'd be surprised if it was over 20%.
@@Grandude77You do understand they _create_ wealth through their businesses? It benefits everyone. Government and taxes just destroy wealth and produce nothing.
It would show that the wealthiest people pay most of the taxes
How about what percentage of taxes are paid by each group? I assume, as in most countries, 80% of tax income is from the top 10%. Most in the bottom 50% recieve more than they pay in many countries like france.
Need to paint the whole picture.
Love your videos btw!
Yep, they always say they want taxes to be fair, they don't realize it would mean their taxes would have to go up. They also don't realize how at least in the us, half of your income tax is paid by your employer, which is on top of the many other ways a company pays tax. Just because a billionaire doesn't pay income tax, does not mean they don't pay tax.
Love the videos too, but I was really wanting to see the same thing in the infographics- what percentage and or $$ amount is paid by each group. I guess I could look it up myself, but it would make this video more complete if it were included.
I think it would go counter to his biased view point.
the problem is that would kill the ideia he is trying to display, I fail to always understand why should group A or B have more tax when it should be why can't have group A or B less tax...
@@rui518 The video clearly is claiming the rich don't pay enough taxes. But yes we should all be focused on how we can increase benefits, decrease taxes, and pay off the debt, which can be done if everyone votes for trump and elon.
Bro, this video was very well put together. solid work. thanks for the visualization. you make it so easy to understand.
Sweden is the Scandinavian Italy 😅
The part about the 1990s tax reforms benefitting the bourgeoisie at the expense of the salaried folk is interestingly basically identical to what happened here in Finland around the same time. The same trends in terms of income and wealth inequality can be observed here as well. I suppose these reforms were meant to harmonise our (Finland's and Sweden's) tax regimes as we joined the EU. Maybe someone else could shed some light on this...
Sweden was doing economically very poorly between 1970-1990, when the tax system was distributing a lot, and standard of living was growing very slowly compared to other western nations. This is a really important fact that was completely ignored in the video.
@@Andre-ct4fq Many countries removed similar tax systems in the same period, basicly when one country started, this forced other countries to follow or they'ld lose a lot of money moving to those countries.
Maybe if Sweden stopped supporting comunist regimes they could have focused on dealing with their tax reforms. Angola is still suffering from the communism that Sweden helped to implement there.
Its called neoliberalism and it came to europe after the fall of iron curtian and all ex socialist countries were basically forced onto them
Same thing happened in 91 in croatia
People call it homeland war, i call it bourgoise revolution
@@mikatubro you didnt take your meds again, stop getting your news from qanon and fox news
This guy deserves way more views, great fcking content
Thank you Henry!
Not even gonna consider inflation as one way to extract capital from the citizens?
Yeah big misstep by them
Taxation is theft and inflation is taxation. They're all the same
And another form of inflation tax: capital gains taxes.
What are you talking about? Inflation primarily harms those who save and invest.
@@BrianReplies It harms savers, yes. Their currency loses value. Inverstors NO! Inflation literally is inflating the money supply. the extra currency typically goes into the property market (Money created for loans) and share markets. The value of those go UP because of inflation.
Your videos are great, it's unfortunate that there's no chance the algorithm will let you get too popular.
Thank you. I hope that's not the case :) I'll keep making videos anyhow.
Naw, the algorithm is reasonably accepting of this kind of politics. It's not going to get wide distribution, but it also won't get suppressed like some other styles (not at all a left/right issue, for clarity).
Snälla, gör denna video på Svenska också. Svenskar behöver förstå detta om vårt eget land, hur de ändrar på saker och vad som hänt de senaste åren. Folk har ingen koll och det gör saken ännu värre varje val. ❤🇸🇪
(Såg din kanal första gången nu. jättebra video! 👍)
Same in Belgium. Employers are moving out to countries where they gave to pay less tax and and where salary costs are lower. Many self employed people (like myself) have to quit. We pay a lot of social security and taxes.... while getting almost nothing in return. Other people, normal salary workers, have more benefits.
Big bourgeoise consolidating small bourgeoise... classic
if you have a company, you can be a normal salary worker for that company and have the same benefits as the others... didn't get your point... whilst keeping the company benefits (car discounts, copany credit card, etc etc).
@@tj92834 off course not... But paying with company card lowers the company profits, and you can get back the VAT from those expenses... So double advantage. Off course this is not for everything... But the law is sufficiently broad to include almost anything.
Same in the Netherlands. Companies threaten to move so the government gives more tax cuts.
Great video again! You should look into Pillar 2 tax framework this is basically the idea to have a global minimum tax which would prevent these billionaires from threatening what they do to get tax breaks
Sweedish: top 1% owns 36%
America: top 1% owns +66%
One of these has a happy population, the other has rich slave owners that complain about their slaves not being able to live
So what? You also have the biggest pie.
Sweden has a higher GINI wealth inequality value than the USA.
Not for long. As with any pyramid scheme, eventually the music stops and someone gets stuck with the bill (‘someone’ is read: same person who is getting the bad end of deal now). The main difference b/w US and Sweden is the Swedes can have a conversation (and likely correction) before the pitchforks come out. Here in the US, it is the opposite.
The top 75% pay 100% of net taxes. What would be fair?
@@MegaLokopoI think that the total tax revenue is the wrong denominator. The inequality of gains of the top 1%, benefitting from the society and economy overseen by the government, is much larger than the ratio of taxes paid. A tax based on all forms of income and wealth gains, with a progressive increase above some standard of living, would be much more fair. At least in the US, so many forms of gains are taxed at a low rate that the very wealthy pay a much lower effective rate than the middle class.
Very interesting video - thanks for the insight.
I have recently moved to Sweden and just got approved for f-tax as a sole trader. I am absolutely not a wealthy person, but Skattevrket wants me to pay 65% tax altogether haha, utter madness!
hear hear. The least you could expect when you have to pay 65% tax is that extremely wealthy have to pay at least as much taxes as you. Unfortunately, that's not the case in Sweden
Don't do business as a sole trader, unless you'll bring in less than roughly 612 000 SEK per year. Anything above that and a limited company (aktiebolag) is the way to go. Also, as a sole trader you're unlimited liable as your own person for any fuck ups, tax problems etc, you as a trader might run into.
Why trading in Sweden if you can become a millionaire by holding Bitcoin tax-free??
Capital tax and wealth tax are an additional tax on something paid for by income that was already taxed. It is a "tax on a tax" and is foundationally unfair and penalizes people who saved, worked hard, were entrepreurial, took risks with investment, and were financially successful. These people, when treated unfairly by the state, have the means to leave and take their businesses, innovation, and capital with them. When that happens, the state spirals into economic turmoil and then decays into social turmoil. Just look at the catastrophic decline of California and New York in the United States. In this video, it would be interesting to use gross $ paid instead of % . At 30% income tax the ceo with annual $2.5 million income pays $750,000 in tax while the $36,000 secretary is usually taxed at a lower rate (say 20%) pays $7,200. They both use the same roads and infrastructure. Most countries tiered tax systems are not even close to "fair" imo.
In a stable society, rich folks benefit massively because they 'use' the wealth spread by the government. Nice to be an entrepreneur but what without educated workers and infrastructure (from internet access to the public transport your workers use to get to work)? Not even to mention cultural diversity and a peaceful environment where nobody needs to do crime to survive.
All I want to say is, if all the money is concentrated in a few hands, rich people suffer as well. Don't let me even start about the advantages of social mobility...
Non-salary income is *not* money earned through hard work, literally by definition. Why is it fair to let people earn income on top of income at the expense of everyone else, but not tax on top of tax to keep that money circulating? If you're stuck on an island and one guy hoards all the food, you're obviously going demand that they share. Money is an essential resource that modern society can't function without.
Edit: wtf multipost, I hate touchscreens.
@@2koi516you are fundamentally misunderstanding money. Money is more of a measurement. It is a measurement of how much someone has benefited society at large. Non salary income represents payment for risk taking. I put some money forward with no guarantee of seeing any of it back. Whatever profit comes from that is the social benefit that came out of that risk. Because we have free markets no one can be forced to take risks but those risks are necessary for an economy to function so those who take those risks and are successful greatly benefit society as they create jobs for people unwilling to take risks and create products that society finds useful. Someone who earns a salary also benefits society as their labor makes the product that benefits society but this is of less social value than coming up with the product and taking the risk to find is production so they get less money.
You don't need many billionaires in a country, to have parliament bow to them...
equality does not mean that everyone makes the same money. it means that everyone has the same OPPORTUNITY to succeed.
It’s almost like wealthy people got that way by creating companies and products and jobs, something governments cannot do. Shocking that they prefer to invest their money in their companies and themselves rather than the black hole of government.
In the United States the top 5% of income earners pay 66% of all income taxes. What is your “fair share” of the money they earned?
"earned" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence 😂
The government is the largest employer...they literally make millions of jobs.
I am in the top 3% of earners in my country. Almost all of my income comes from trading options on the US market. Why should i pay more in taxes because I generate more income? And why is my productivity demonized? And then when I save and reinvest the large majority of my money, increasing my wealth, and I taxed and demonized for that?
The biggest problem with wealth inequality in my view is the influence that a minority can have in society. That said it seems to be impossible to tax the wealthy effectively
I agree with you!
The wealthy are just massively more productive than the average person. Who's more productive, the 130 IQ chemical engineer who innovates and founds his own company, or a horde of average people? And more intelligent people increase productivity enough to free the intelligent from less productive labor before anyone jumps on the "you didn't build that" argument. Wealth per se is not the problem rather it's rent-seeking from bad actors particularly in the political class which will not be solved by giving government bureaucracy more money. Money going into the government is a sure sign the social issues the programs ostensibly address will never be solved and the economic multiplier is less than 1
@TheThreatenedSwan hedgefund managers and Wallstreet types aren't productive at all for humanity. Don't assume someone who's wealthy is automatically brilliant. Sure a chemical engineer with a high iq contributes a great deal more to humanity than the average person but a significant amount of people who collect capital gains are not at all
@@TheThreatenedSwanyou have it completely backwards. The wealthy aren't productive at all, as the video describes, they gain wealth from investing their already existing wealth. They do nothing and gain money. It's an incredibly dumb system and taxing them until they can't do this is a good solution. The government can provide goods and services without needing profits which in itself is an inefficiency in the system because it pools wealth in the hands of those that already have everything. We need to take their wealth until they can't buy rules in their favour which is what we have now.
@@TheThreatenedSwan That is such a silly take. To equate wealth with productivity is just outright idiotic. The highly productive may generally tend to become more wealthy, but the opposite is FAR from true. Much wealth is generational, as another commenter pointed out, the worth of your run-of-the-mill hedgefund managers / speculators to society is close to zero, or in most cases, actually negative.
It’s a problem that’s been ”solved” many times throughout history. Can we all agree to do it peacefully this time?
Or just revolutionize it by turning it to crowd funding
Sure, women like me who have worked, saved, invested, and delayed our family planning well into our mid-30s to mid-40s, who are good citizens, good spouses, good mothers should just be forced to give EVEN MORE of our money to chronically unemployed single moms who have three children with three different men, who regularly smoke cigarettes and have sex in front of their children. That sounds fair and reasonable, right? Like it’s not providing any perverse incentives to encourage more bad choices and actions, right?
Important caveat for the consumption taxes; they affect everyone, but *not equally*. Consumption does not scale linearly with income beyond a certain point; the wealthy can live very comfortably while only a relatively small portion of their income is spent on consumables. As such, general taxes on consumption have a relatively slight impact on the rich, and such taxes are generally regressive in nature (unless targeted at specific luxury goods, eg. yachts).
So what? They affect everyone equally: according to their consumption.
You are effectively saying that because the wealthy don't consume as much as you in proportion to their income, they should be punished. Thus you don't even want a consumption tax but something completely else?
@@edheldude This is a video about the impact of the tax system on wealth inequality. That the wealthy consume less is very relevant to how consumption taxes feed into wealth inequality, and I thus felt it to be an important caveat to the claim within the video that consumption taxes are paid by 'everyone'.
Alao yes, I am not fond of consumption taxes. They are one of the more regressive forms of taxation in place, and I favour taxation being progressive. Land value tax would be the best tax imo, but I favour most other forms of taxation over sales taxes.
I do not seek to 'punish' the wealthy for spending less of their income; my cost of living is extremely low, so I also spend a much smaller share of my income than most. Consumption taxes are thus quite favourable to my personal finances relative to most other forms of taxation. I just separately recognise that they do not have desirable effects if you are seeking to reduce wealth inequality, as it impacts the wealthy less than the poor.
In the Netherlands politicians protect the board room form tax, because the will one day be selected for these positions....the job carousel as we call it.
Great video for sure, the only criticism I have is one missed opportunity in the lego bricks as money analogy: stacking the bricks on top of each other to show the actual height difference of each group's wealth would help to illustrate the issue even further
High taxes means that the old rich group get protected from poor people getting rich while holding onto their own wealth
That's it. That's why old money and big companies love the Left. They are destroying competition and creating the society they think they're complaining about.
It's really oppression of the poorest. Look, if the gov gets more money from rich people by having lower taxes for them so they don't flee, then by all means, get more money. However... the working-class should get lower taxes too, it's abhorrent that working-class get a punch in the gut from tax-costs just because they can't "flee" like the rich ones may.
Instead of fearing that wealth will "flee", why not give more to literally everyone by backing-off the income taxes? Literal cash distribution to everyone that works is so much better at creating equality than some extra tax income for the gov.
That’s why new money right and old money vote left: tradizional american capistalist is to get more richer and social democracy is to mantain your welth from a rick people viewpoint.
That is without questiom part of it.
B-but muh Jeff Bezos!!!
I mean this inequality in taxes is the very reason Sweden has more billionaires than those other countries. Without this inequality, billionaires will just move away from Sweden and the govt will have nobody to tax (on the side of the rich)
What's the portion of tax being paid by each group? In the US, the top 10% pay for 70% of the income taxes.
Thank you for including English translations in the subs at 8:25.
Taxes must be counted in SEK not % to see who pays most taxes.
1 SEK for someone who makes a 100 is much more than 1 SEK for someone who makes 1000😅
For that to be true the tax would have to be levied in absolute terms as well. Like a medieval "head tax." Welcome to the future, we have maths here. 🙃
This is what a lot of analysis misses. The percentage of tax burden doesn't matter when you want to find out who pays the most. The total amount of money from each group matters here.
Fantastic video!
This is first ive seen of this channel.
Youre doing excellent and inportant work! Never stop!
Unfortunately, your discussion of wealth tax completely misses the most important point: the difference between wealth that the owner has produced by his own efforts and wealth that is produced by government and the community, but the private owner is legally entitled to take for himself, especially the unimproved value of land. Taxing the former is unjust; not taxing the latter is unjust. As the Henry George Theorem shows, all government spending on desirable services and infrastructure is a subsidy to landowners. The entire unimproved value of land is NOTHING BUT the market's estimate of how much the owner will be legally entitled to steal from the community by owning the land.
"...and wealth that is produced by government..." ... the government don't product any wealth... only steal... and steal... and steal... the goals, the target, the objective of the government is only steal... through feigning good... thats everybody know what government is not...
Person A starts an engineering business, machining parts for numerous applications like cars, aircraft, motors, etc. He eventually employs 40 people and assists in country's defense and transport infrastructure. Person B just enjoys PlayStation, living with parents and working local jobs like waiter, gas station, etc. Should they make the same money?
It is tragic that the Swedish parliament allows itself to be threatened by someone who lives solely on the work of others without giving very much in return. Spotify does not support the music industry but is another parasitic company that does not contribute to the creative side. This kind of business does not create very many jobs. It is only in the development of the software that there is work. After that, quite a few have to be spent on maintenance and support functions. Of course, they pay no further tax. The company structure and the tax rules let them off the hook. Spotify makes sure to run at a loss all the time and reinvest the earnings so they don't have to pay. Sweden should just let him and Spotify go to hell!
You live on the work of others. Everyone does! It's called the free market.
@@edheldude Most people is part of a production. Others are just parasiites.
So no, not everyone does it!
Okay, but companies generally only pay tax on their profits and it simply isn't possible to run at a loss forever. The more usual scam is to claim the company operates from some other location and therefore their profits are taxable there instead. Apple was recently penalised for operating this particular scam. One way to crack down on this sort of thing is simply to deem a company to be operating within any country in which it sells its products and tax that money.
The real problem in the music industry has been the majority of record labels. They had a stranglehold and still do. With the advent of streaming they strongarmed the companies offering the service.
@@loganmedia1142 That's not a scam. You can set a legal structure like an LLC pretty much anywhere you want.
As an EU citizen you can easily start your company in any member state. If you're running e.g. an online business, why not have it in Bulgaria where you only pay 10% flat tax.
@@edheldude No not everyone does it! There are a lot of people in this that is part of a production. Free market has nothing to do with being a parasite!
I’ve been saying it for years now, “Here in the United States it is unconstitutional for the taxation of income. It states that income is not supposed to be taxed and yet we’ve been illegally taxed for more than a century. The IRS is illegal.”
It is a game of monopoly, what did you expect?
We don't expect, we know. Do we know evenly spread wealth is good for a society, we know. Do we know how to spread wealth, we know. Do I know why the population of sweden still uses spotify, I don't know?
Jeez people know nothing of how money and economy works. And they vote for policies that prevent their own economic mobility.
@@edheldude Especially economists, they're impressively bad at economics.
@@tj92834 I don't think you understand, whoever has the money has the power.
Great video!
Now I just wish we had the same data (current status quo and list recent decades' changes) presented as nicely for other countries as well. :D
The tax system changed over the years because the country was going bankrupt. The problem is when you tax the over achievers they just go somewhere else. The middle class in Northern Europe pay high tax because they choose to give up some of their freedoms to depend on the government.
Shh. They don't want to hear the truth.
Totally agree my friend, I just wrote a similar message. If taxes get so bad that you get tought in school that the US is good for corporation for example then most of people wanting to make big businesses would move out in the US to try there
You forget it's possible to impose a law taxing money moved offshore. Nobody becomes wealthy in a bubble. those looking out only for themselves and doing everything to avoid helping the counties that made them wealthy are just greedy traitors.
Rich people are not overachiever. They just feed more on the society and need less equality too keep it that way.
Show any scientific data, backed up by a consensus saying rich people do more than anybody else, you'll find none.
Stop spreading faire tales that fuel a US way of seeing society.
Don't even try. They just want to hate on the rich and the capitalist, not realizing there will be nothing without them. Wealth redistribution has been tried so many times, and every single time it has failed. People are fixated on the idea that their form of Socialism is going to work. Let me break it to you, it's not going to work.
As far as I am aware Sweden used to be so poor that 1/3 of its population was emigrating in 1800 and early 1900. In 1930s "socialist" policies have been implemented with progressive taxation. this somehow has not ruined the country but resulted in its rapid development into one of the richest countries in the world. Than in 1980 socialist policies went too far and started taxing too much, which affected economy very negatively. And later neoliberals stepped in an they got rid of many taxes on accumulated wealth, capital gains taxes etc. Since than Swedish people get gradually poorer and poorer with inequalities rising and gang warfare spreading in poorest areas.
Literally every country in the West, even the USA
The fastest growth in the US have been under Left-wing governments with progressive taxes
It took a Left-wing government to end the Great Depression - 3 Republican (Right-wing) presidents couldn't do it
I think you are missing one most important part is that the income tax in Sweden is way TOO high in the first place. If it had a reasonable income tax, then everyone would benefit from having little / no capital gains tax and no wealth tax. Because having a low income tax would allow people to invest residual money into real estate and stock market and retire early. The fight should be not against the billionaire, but against the system which punishes hard work by taxing the crap out of your income
No one should be able to accumulate large amounts of wealth, to were you can unjustly influence democracy(Unilaterally make the rules).
That would drive up realestate prices making them less attainable for the average person. Basic economics.
@@Danny-bd1ch You don't need money to unjustly influence democracy. If people aren't allowed to make as much money as they want, why would anyone work harder than they have to in order to max out their pay? If I can make that maximum amount of money in 6 months why should I work the other 6 months of the year?
@@MegaLokopo But it helps immensely.
@@Danny-bd1chwhy? Give a good reason? You have 1% of the population that is much smarter than 90% why should you cap them?
Us to Sweden: “Hold my beer!”
Can you do this experiment again but for the USA instead of Sweden?
Your viewership would explode....
It's essentially the same
@@jasonpauda4204it's much worse :)
Great content! Clearly a lot of effort.
So what is the solution? I was waiting for that part😢
100% tax above a certain income
The solution is to dissolve the overgrown socialist state, leaving only enough government to keep the rule of law, then simplify the tax code. Either get rid of all income/wealth taxes or make it a flat tax. Remove consumption tax on everyday necessities like food, and keep it for everything else.
Being wealthy isn't the problem. Being poor is. You can help the poor without taking from the wealthy. Letting the poor keep more of their own money solves this equitably.
One of the best editing I've seen, I was looking at an action movie lol
Here’s the brutal truth about why this inequality gospel doesn’t make sense:
1. The amount of wealth made by an individual is in direct correlation to the ones impact to the world
2. Law firm partner vs secretary example
1st it assumes that the secretary does not progres in her career for 70 years which is crazy, 2nd the law firm, in order to hire a secretary like Asa has to be earning 10x more in order to keep her job, otherwise its counterproductive and Asa is going to be fired
3. Ultimately all people call the shots for their lives and when you’re making consisten salary like Asa, that comes with the pay check every month, you can calculate that it is not the way to millions, billions or whatever financial amount that pleases you…
YET most refuses to do anything with it, because of how pleasant and secure their pay check makes them feel
Good videos brother
This story needs to be re-told in every country.
Great video.
Any chance of turning the music volume a little lower? It is both distracting and hell for people with hearing difficulties.
Thanks for the great video.
Sweden's wealth tax was ludicrous. My father used to work there and because his house in the USA hadn't sold, he got taxed on ASSETS OWNED ABROAD with the result that his tax bill came out as higher than his salary.
I'd say it is working as intended: he is being forced to liquidate his assets and reduce his wealth.
I bet he never worried about where he was going to live and what he was going to eat. I'm happy that he and all rich people pay taxes.
Respectfully, your father should not be allowed to own property in the USA. Only Americans should be able to own property in the USA
I bet he cried so much it sank his yacht.
So your expat worker dad got taxed like everyone else. How is that ludicrous?
Fantastic video with straightforward visuals
Very interesting video. But a bit misleading. Take that example of Asa and Bengt, let's assume that there was a flat income tax of 10%, Bengt would pay 250k€/year, while Asa only paid 3.6k€/year, which is 70x less than what Bengt paid (just the opposite perspective of what's shown in the video). That was assuming a flat rate, but actually it's progressive, so Bengt pays a lot more. I'm not defending the rich but not all rich were born rich and not all of them have plans to own/run the world.
You would want someone who knows what they're doing to run big money investing ideas. The layman can't do that. They buy toys and alcohol.
@@ckckck12 true, funny and sad at the same time.
So, there is only one issue, and this is the issue with all progressive tax ideals.
They confuse Income Tax with wealth, which are totally diferent things.
In this video, he says that bengst earns 2500K/year and Asa 36K/year. This is completely misleading. What actually happens is that Bengt earns a substantial amount of his money from shares and investements, not cold hard cash.
So even though his wealth increases 2500K, he only pays incime taxes for 300K, because the rest of the money is from non liquid assets like shares and investments.
This wealth is extremely difficult to tax. The problem lies in the fact the assets value changes based on the amount sold
If we tax all billionaires based on their wealth, they would be forced to sell their assets to pay the 2200K difference. The socialist would be quite happy to have enforced their egualitarian society, but they forget that if the market is flooded with shares of billionaires that need the money to pay 250K in taxes, those shares will sharply drop in value, forcing them to sell even more, droping the value further.
The first most immediate result would be a crash in every company stock price, followed by massive layoffs (so now Asa is out of a job, Yay!).
The second result is a great disdain for all investment opporunities. Because since you'll be taxed based on the wealth instead of wether or not the product generates value, things like owing homes would be economically inviable (imagine you had to pay 10% of your home value every year). This would again force people to sell their homes, lowering the value, crashing the house prices.
You then have the issue that now that owing a home is essentially the same as paying rent, most people would end up paying rent. This would make rent prices go up
Eventually, the rent prices would up as high or higher than the property taxes. This would make the few wealthy people that remain to keep owning and renting their property, to first cover the wealth tax, then make a profit for their own home.
Congratulations. Now Bengt instead of living in a mansion lives in Asa's home, and Asa rents a smaller property to Bengt, at a realitively higher percentage than the tax cost to maintain that house.Yay!
I made the example with homes, but this would also apply to any other investment like a startup, so no new jobs will be created.
This is why wealth were pushed to be abolished.
The alternative is capital gains tax, but the problem again is that its a tax that applies once the asset is sold, meaning if he doesnt sell them, he isnt taxed.
That makes it so he looks like he earns 2500K, but pays just 30K in taxes instead of 250K.
But I dont think there is any other to prevent this that doesn invokve destroying the investmeny market, and by proxy, millions of jobs.
@@federicocaputo9966 Bro stop spitting facts otherwise people will start to cry
@figueiredomike did you not understand that Bengt doesn’t only pay income taxes? his income is not the same as his salary due to his capital income which is taxed lower than salary. so he ends up paying a smaller share of his income in taxes - it is that easy.
The editing on this video is incredible!
5:45 - How about scrapping the progressive tax on income and also make it a flat rate?
The whole financial system is unfair….. rich, get richer, poor get poorer. It would be so amazing if the rich people shared, but……..
So the billionaires will move to other countries, many people will become unemployed, tax lost throughout.
No they won't. They will threaten to, like a little fat kid up the park threatening to take his ball home because you won't play his rules. But they won't because they are greedy and they want YOUR money. And guess what happens if they do leave? Opportunity! Nature abhors a vacuum and someone else will step in. The world doesn't end if rich people leave, that's just a rich person lying to you so he can keep taking your money.
Great video. I suggest putting subtitles in English (though I'm Brazilian) when you highlight text or play a video clip, just showing the gist of the information, in order to keep the audience engaged in those sections.
Worst part: austerity measures lead to a rise of the far right
This is a lovely presented video. Just a tip though, the video is presented in English but there were no English translations of any written or spoken Swedish during the video. Thank you for sharing the interesting state of affairs in your country brother.
Actually tax evasion is not a problem, if you implement a wealth tax correctly because most of the wealth that the super rich own is concentrated in assets, that are local (like companies, real estate or land) and cannot be moved anywhere. And getting to that wealth also seems entirely possible as we have seen during the russian invasion in ukraine, when governments all over europe confiscated the assets of russion oligarchs. The problem is currently that most people don't know about this important issue and there are no democratic majorities pushing for wealth taxes.
And one more thing the Bengt Jonnson guy likely does not need to work at all, because if he invests his wealth of for example €50mio at a market rate of 5%, he will be making his €2.5mio a year without doing anything. This gets even worse with billionares, with €1bn you make a €1mio every week just by investing conservatively into the markets, but likely you can invest very differently with those kind of sums and get even higher returns.
Very good visualizations again in this video ; )
Doing nothing = providing liquidity for investments and carrying the risk? You do understand people need reinvested money for new businesses and development?
@@edheldude Yes investments are always necessary and can be extremely helpful. However if you look at how billionaires invest, the problems reveal themselves. Very little of the money will be used to push small startups without any personal strategy to increase the billionaires power. Instead it is just way less risky to crush smaller companies or influence entire markets because as long as the authorities don't step in (and they rarely can) you can create revenue very predictably. And if authorities step in it is rather in not allowing certain transactions than actually punishing behavior that is very harmful. Even the authorities are through political leadership at their mercy and can be pressured at any time with job losses or local investment stops. I recommend watching the channel how money works for some examples of how billionaires invest. Once you have very large sums of money investments can work very differently. So there might be very little risk to carry and the investments very often harm the society at large.
@@edheldude In the case of just investing broadly into markets to get the 5% interest, you'd also just buy stocks that have likely IPOed a long time ago. So there is no liquidity provided directly and it would not change the markets overall. But this obviously does not use the power the billionaire has optimally, so it's not really a good investment strategy for them to just invest broadly. This would be literally doing nothing and watching the money increase
@@pericvlor Most big entrepreneurs just want to solve big problems of humanity and create something cool. Money is just a tool, and an energy to make things happen.
@@edheldude Ideally yes, in practice this is sadly often not the case. But humans have a tendency to improve things so maybe we can solve these problems one day.
I don't think their greed can know any bounds.
This is a world wide trait, that exists almost everywhere, but this system and way of control, is not sustainable and is on verge of collapse, simply because the money that's being created, or printed is in excess, of the actual natural resources that are available, which of course are not shared evenly. Also everything taken from nature by force, will have to be paid back, at some future time, which is already starting happen, in the form of natural and environmental disasters.
Wtf are you on about? We live in abundance of resources. How do you "pay back" for wood, grown food, or even oil?
You'd have to define what you mean by taking from nature by force.
The current system that is expanding inequality is definitely not sustainable, but we probably cannot simply let it collapse. Undoubtedly if it gets that far the ultra-wealthy will actually still be alright and everyone else will bear the brunt of the chaos. An example would be the 2008 crisis. The majority of wealthy people didn't just walk away from that unscathed, but used their wealth and market manipulation to get even richer while ordinary people suffered the consequences.
Man, it's good to know that other countries have to go through this same crap as the US does. I was beginning to think that exceptionalism claptrap was actually real. Admittedly, I've long thought our idea of exceptionalism meant that we were somehow excepted from learning the lessons of history, but... still... good to see that other peoples are getting screwed over by the same kind of greedy mofos in their countries.
Why is it greedy to take risks and run businesses but it's not greedy to try take their wealth?
@@edheldude It's just balancing the books on the economy. The money amount is finite, so if the national budget has a deficit then the money is held elsewhere. Or, to use a different metaphor, taxes ensure that the money flows where it needs to rather than pooling up behind the dams of the rich.
However, you needn't worry your pretty little head too much about the efficacy of government taxing the rich, for the rich have bought out government long since.
@@angelsy1975 That's why old money and the left work together. They both want a society that stops competition so old money is not disrupted.
If you wanted to reduce poverty, you'd support more economic mobility and help people produce wealth.
Also, money is not finite, not rare, and is constantly created through loans. With good enough idea or story I can right now go to the bank and they'll create tens or hundreds of thousands for me. If you have proof of good business skills, there's no limit to the money they'll create for you. That's the bank's business - they _want to give money_ if they know you can pay it back.
@@edheldude Funny how this comment of yours was blocked and I only just now realized you had replied to me. Hitting "sort by" newest comments seems to reveal missing comments. Of course, then you have to locate the thread the comments were made in - good thing my original was only posted a day ago, else that could have been quite a tedious search, lol.
At any rate, snark aside, I don't have enough buy-in to really continue this conversation, beyond to say that you're correct about the fractional banking system "creating" money on the balance sheet to be paid back in "real" money - and that in effect is what taxes are, replevying existing monies from out in the wild... thus, balancing the sheet of the economy. Monies held in pool, untaxed and otherwise unused, are effectively seigniorage in private practice, lol, like all those two-dollar bills that get handed out at Christmas and go on to never be spent. Kind of like how the "new money" corporate overlords must rely on loans to survive, using their stock value as collateral, since their real income may in fact be very low - especially if they aren't offering dividends on their company's stock. Always seemed like a bad sign if a company has a high valued stock but low or no dividend.
But ah well, maybe you'll see my comment too, eventually. 🙂
So basically, the state taxes you on money you make, when you spend that money, when you sell stuff to make money, and on some of the things you already bought just for owning it. Seems like the state is against the building of wealth.
This how corruption works 😂
How can you miss the point of the video that hard???
Absolutely wonderful video!!
Billionaires are never satisfied with what they have. They always want more, more, and more.
Everyone wants more and more
@@asandax6Not at all.. having more means more concerns..
People who had realized that.. procure a balanced easy life.
You cam bet that 2 out of 3 individuals would rather have just enough resources without issues.. than a lot with the included target on their backs.
@@asandax6 "Everyone wants more and more"
Nonsense. Many just want enough to be able to provide a reasonably comfortable and worry-free life for themselves and their family.
@@antred11 Do you know anyone that would give up a job promotion or give away all their winnings if they won the lottery?
There is something truly bizarre about the ultra-wealthy complaining about paying tax. They're like spoilt children.
❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎 Great video and Lego explanation.
Taxes themselves are unfair, it’s not fair to force someone to pay more just because they have more. After all they get the same or even less social benefits from the government. And they are less likely to rely as heavily on government services as people who pay less. I get that in practice, there is a need to tax people. But talking about fairness in this context is just plain wrong.
You reached of the edge, almost fall in rabbit hole... but lack a push... to you is needed
Tax always is a Theft...
Tax is a Theft always...
Tax is a Theft...
@@joaoninguem922 I am more of a minarchyst in practice, but I think a perfect society would be anarcocapitalist
Very well done! I see Lego in a entirely new way 😆
When you spend all your money on liabilities rather than on assests, you end up in the 90% group
Obviously. You really think 90% of the population is so dumb they don't realize that?
I have 3 degrees served in Iraq. I came home and applied for thousands of jobs. In ten years I got 3 interviews.
I'm done chasing the carrot. Fuck capitalism. The harder you work the more you pay, until you get to the 10%. The you get paid.
The question what is left to spend in asset. For some negligible nothing. You always spend the first 1500€ (or Swedish krone equivalent) o necessities, also a billionaire.
how can people like such a write and like such a comment?!
people need to pay rent food water. many have not much money left, the time and knowledge to invest whats left over, saving a bit is also no bad idea and having made some money by never spending beyond the absolute necessary won’t make you happy in the end.
not everyone has so much access money lol
Bra jobbat, bra video kvalité och intressant innehåll, jag har prenumererat!
Det är sjukt hur Sverige har blivit en skatteparadis för de rika, vi måste fixa det!
Stort tack! 🙏
Håller med dig, det blir allt dyrare att vara fattig i Sverige
Wealth inequality is a part of human nature- it’s called the Pareto principle
You forgot about social insurances. They - at least in Germany - are extremely focused on the 90%
This issue is oversimplified. Tax rates look great if you already have an established business that one isn't putting money into, however, for someone who is about to take taxed earned income and then invest that, the capital gain taxes look insane.
The part that I believe is very problematic is the Spotify example. The problem persists with banks. If a person with a few hundred dollars said they were going to close their account because they were not getting what they want, the bank does not care that much. However, if it was someone with a few hundred thousand, the bank suddenly really cares and will bend over to please them. I've seen it plenty of times in banks. The staff at the bank always seems a bit irritated by it, but it shows how having money gives you power on a more local level. And like the example with Spotify, these people, that are unhappy in a bank, will threaten to leave and take all their money elsewhere. These people know that they can use their wealth as leverage to get what they want. The wealthy get benefits at banks for simply having money. These people do not spend any more in banking, but instead less. They get perks, free things that are normally paid by those who are not as wealthy as them, and special treatment. It is cheaper to be rich than poor.
There is a fundamental flaw here. Billionaires nearly always do not have liquid assets, they own companies. You don’t wanna tax this part of their wealth. These companies create jobs for hundreds or even thousands of people who need them to put food on the table and they provide products or services for people. By taxing this company heavily people will lose their jobs and prices will go up.
You only tax that when liquifying the asset to buy something else...
This is always the trope, but you know what has never happened, this scenario. Companies will adjust and stay in business to further their own interests or sell to private equity. Businesses are in operation for shareholders, not the employees, which are a resource, not the reason the business exists. It’s never, ever, about the people.
The really rich own share in a company...an asset that is liquid because they can borrow gainst it and sell it, but can also tax shelter. Most investors don't run the company, they pay the CEO, often obscene compensation to do that. If the company goes bankrupt investors will lose some but it will be a tax write off and usually they are diversified. The CEO walks away with a golden parachute and no consequence, and the workers get laid off. If the company does well everyone, except the workers, automatically makes more. If you regulate and foster competition more people make more and the very rich make less....they are still very rich. If you use that extra money to invest in the working class the middle class grows and the economy,( because the middle class spends the money), and by default tax income grows. If the rich have most of the money it sits in their portfolio. The economy grows but only at the top and tax revenue and the middle class .
@@Said_w_the_G what are you talking about!? The scenario you said ALWAYS happens!!!!
If these companies are paying so little that their full time employees qualify for assistance, then the owners need to be taxed to make up the difference
I am surprised to see such low number of views for such great content
It pisses me off when my paycheck is $2300 for the week and I only get to keep $1700
You know what should piss you off? It's that if you have a paycheck of $2300, then you probably produce a value for your employer of at least 4 times that. But your bosses and the owners of your employer steals almost all of that -- and you know what, they pay LESS tax on that than you do on your small share that you get as a consolatory salary. THAT should piss you off
@@TheMarketExitLol. Good thing people who argue that way are never doing it for their own interest and always just for the workers. They definitely don't want to get in on a grift themselves.
@@TheMarketExitThe employer has more scarce skills thus why they get more money. You also know they pay far more total in taxes. People who argue for redistributionism generally do so because of malicious envy not because they're good people
@@TheThreatenedSwan in the US the 1.5 million richest families have an average wealth over ten million dollars. Those people don't have to work at all, they just sit on the nest egg and live like kings on part of the asset appreciation.
For every smart leader in that group there are dozens who don't do a damn thing. Janitors and grocery clerks work harder.
You should worry more about how your tax money is spent.
Thank you! that's a great video! I will be looking for more. As explained though, meanwhile companies are able to move abroad looking for lower taxes I think the tendency will be an excruciating blackmail into do what I want or I leave and who pays the price will be directly workers and indirectly the rest of the country. I've seen the same blackmail in Spain and they are always given what they want (no matter who rules). Unless global taxes are introduced for global companies there is nothing that can be done I fear.
Spotify hasn't made a profit in its existence, how could he be a billionaire?
He owns 7% of a company with a $72bn market cap. It is very easy to turn that into real money. Back in April, for instance, he sold 650,000 company shares for $179 million.
Big companies like uber, Spotify, facebook. Could go for years if not decades without profit. In first years they grow on credit and shares. When they are big af they could do some minor change as start seling some premium Access or higher fees and they Would make bilions. So he is bilionare from only promise of that his company Would make profit somewhere in the future
watching this , I realize I would be a dictator . Because I think the proper response to a billionaire threatening to move their business might be .... well ... ask yourself what would happen to a billionaire if they made that threat in Russia or China .
Ppl with the most power must accept the most responsibility. If capitalists aren't willing to take the responsibility, they shouldn't be expected to reap the rewards.
that's a great incentive for people to build wealth, I'm sure you would have people working really hard to become rich under your system... oh right they DON'T and it all falls apart. history has shown this over and over again.
@gusmc2220 I mean , China isn't doing too bad . If you are going to use a nation's infrastructure to get rich , you kind of owe it to your country to pay taxes on your business .
Property tax on you home however I disagree with . You shouldn't be forced to work if you own a cabin in the woods and just want to chill .
@@KANJICODER_IRL I stopped reading after "China's not doing too bad" LMFAO!
What would fair taxes be? the top 25 percent of people pay %100 of net taxes in the us. AKA the bottom 75 percent in people get more money out of the government than they put in. How is that fair?
So if the top 10% provide a product to 90% of the population and that bottom 90% all give a presentage of their money to buy that product, it only makes sense that this top 10% are so wealthy. They have virtually the entire population using a product they created.
Scenario. 10 people with 10 dollars live on an island.
1 person knows how to make hammocks out of palm tree leafs. He charges 2 dollars a hammock. After selling everyone a hammock he becomes the wealthiest person on the island. He has $28 dollars and everyone else has $8. Should he be penelized for his success and wealth?
There has to be a way to lower financial concentration without penalizing the rich. Concentrate on more incentivized approaches to encourage the wealthy to contribute to charities, education systems, prog4ams that advance medicine and other techbologies that benefit society.
Perhaps that's what they are doing, but all i hear in the US is bitter people demand that rich people pay more taxes to the government.
Why would wealth inequality be something bad.
It's the ratio that's the problem. If it's very high you have feudalism basically because you need to slave away at the job to barely get by.
@marcosteiner3619 its not "basically" slavery though. It's not even indentured servitude.
@ekosh6266 maybe watch his (market exit) video on this exact topic, he released it only couple month ago
@@marcosteiner3619 well, even if Its true that a very high inequality ratio results in de facto feudalism, the ratio is not that high, and Its been steadily decreasing since actual feudalism. Which seems to be the case as long as basic human rights are respected. The only thing keeping feudalism in place in Its days was the king limiting nobility titles, but then as technology progressed and rulers failed to regulate It, the power eventually fell down to the people. Thats what our only concern should be, to keep intact the basic human rights.
@@ekosh6266 Yeah but I think those rights are linked to your economic output.
Bra video och har själv sett detta under senaste åren. Du borde göra en video på isk konton och vem det gynnar mest. Har inte hört några andra länder som har det eller något liknade (kan ha på tok fel)
tack för din kommentar och bra idé, ska kolla om jag ska göra nåt om ISK
ISK är ju det folkligaste vi har. Tycker reglerna gott kan behållas.
you should be only bothered of 90% paying a lot...everyone should keep his money rich or poor...no such thing as ineqauality unless you are entitled person ...work for it
Hang on a minute, its not like 90% of people aren't working...
What kind of work did those 1%ers do to earn their wealth? How come that kind of work deserves to be taxed less than the work of the lower class? Why does the CEO's work deserve to be payed that much more than his secretary?
In an economy without any wealth redistribution, the wealth moves up the ladder and more and more of it ends up in the hands of fewer and fewer people at the top. That shouldn't be so hard to see.
Is the single mom working 70 hours a week while caring for her kids not working hard enough? Why does she have to work just as hard as (if not harder than) her CEO for 1/1,000th the pay?
The idea that how hard you work determines how much you earn is simply untrue and I know you know that.
Also the idea of taxes is kinda great, as a people we agree to pool together a small amount of our individual resources into a central authority who we elected, who uses that wealth to do things for the good of the collective. Providing vital services that everybody gets to benefit from just for being a member of their society, no matter the conditions they might individually be facing.
@@ryanconners3048the comment of someone that is informed and probabily has studied microeconomics and macroeconomics, vs the comment of someone that doesn’t knows what is he talking about 😂🙌👏
Stop defending the people who exploit you. We are reaching insane levels of denial
Ah, the argument of greed. Why don't you just say what you mean? "It's mine!!!"
@@ryanconners3048 which problemm you solved that turned into a profitable business and employed people ? none you work for a paycheck, go start a company that provides value and give it all to the employees and goverrment while you are at it