I’m sure you under estimate how much you get for free. Most people do. Here in NY, they complain about losing parking spaces to bike corrals. Then I mention that they park their private property for free on taxpayer dime. Then I hear crickets.
Would you want to trade places with them?
Check out the concept but, borrow and die financial strategy.
I find the people who complain about high taxes are usually complaining from a very selfish point of view. They want all the benefits of society that has a great infrastructure but they don’t want to pay for it. They often scapegoat people who are less off than them, but fail to look upward at the people who are tenfold better off than them who are not paying their fair share, and getting all kinds of legislation, corporate, and other, sweetheart deals that benefit only them.
It’s really hard to believe that people are talking about US as the utopia for taxes and infrastructure. They talk about our high salaries. When I traveled in Finland this summer, my friend was astounded how much something as basic as tampons cost. My daughter called me and she needed some cash to pay for them. So while “the taxes are low” and “the salaries are high”, what do you have left over at the end of basic necessities is not a whole lot
Health insurance for a person who has company sponsored insurance is at least $10,000 a year. And that’s a good price from employer based insurance. If you’re a freelancer it’s going to cost a lot more and that doesn’t include co-pays. You see you can spend $10,000 a year on health insurance but still have to sell out another $30 every time you go to the doctor . And your insurance still will not pay for everything and you’ll get additional bills, the ones we call mystery bills, where you agree to pay whatever fees without knowing what they’re gonna cost until after you’ve had the procedure done.
The cost of food here is astronomical. The quality of it is mediocre. The cost of housing is so unaffordable that most people can never buy a home. As other posters have said in almost every place, you have to have a car and that’s very expensive to run. The average cost for public university is $30,000 a year.
But throughout this entire thread, people talk about subsidies for the poor people. But they never talk about the other cost of government. Judges cost a lot of money. Legislators cost a lot of money. So much of taxes go to things that middle income and poor people don’t use. So much of taxes go to the ultra wealthy, and they are schemes to avoid paying for the infrastructure that helps them get wealthy. it’s very difficult to get wealthy in a place that doesn’t have a legal structure in place to make it happen.