Kill the commies!

I'm actually a socialist. I believe in social ownership and state control of economy, and I also believe that the state should provide all of its citizens some free services like healthcare. I've lived in Finland my whole life and I'm pretty happy about the free services I've had during my life. I mean, my teeth are straight, I have no deadly diseases and althought I've been out of work for long periods, I have not starved to death. I've also never had to live under a bridge, so that's a bonus.

But the welfare states are crumbling all over the Europe. In my home country they are trying to save it with desperate measures, eg. raising taxes and reducing the number of municipalities. I also heard that there are people who have been waiting dental checkout or knee surgery for YEARS. So obviously the system is not working.

Below is a graph of how much people pay taxes in Finland. On the left is the tax-% and at the bottom is the yearly income. As you can see it only goes up to 200 000 but above that the division of tax-% is pretty much the same. Until 50 000 euro the taxing is progressive but after that you see something strange. There is a lot of variation and around 150 000 yearly income you see people who actually pay no taxes at all. This is because in Finland we have no progressive taxing for unearned income, which is money from investments, dividends, etc. We have constant tax rate of 30% for unearned income and after tax deductions it can actually go down to zero. So, just like we have freeriders among the poor (and most of the time, lazy) people, we also have those at the top end of the income graph. I suppose it's same thing in the States, all other countries of Europe, and basically every country except Cuba and North Korea.

Tax rate by income in Finland (2009)

My plan is to pay zero taxes when I'm 40 and use all the benefits of our welfare state. I want to be ultimate parasite!