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Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2025
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Honestly I love taxes. I don't love that billionaires don't pay enough taxes and the unequal tax burden across different social groups but I love taxes and I love the idea of taxes. My dream would be a society where I work for basically pocket money and everything else - quality staple food and fresh food, education, healthcare, adequate housing, transportation, communication, childcare - is provided to me.
Honestly, one of my biggest conspiracy theories is that US employers (which are almost universally rich conservatives) use pre-tax income specifically to garner hate for taxes. Because conservatives always want to lower taxes on the rich, so they try to poison the average person’s view on them to sway public opinion. Whenever Americans discuss their income, it is always referencing the pre-tax amount. For instance, if an American says they’re making $50k per year, they’re probably only taking home ~$42k. So they tend to see taxes as an extreme burden, because they’re always looking at their pre-tax amount when they think about their income.
The American tax code is also intentionally kept extremely confusing, to further stoke hatred for taxes. Taxes could be an automatic “hey, here’s how much you owe, and how we calculated it. Let us know if you have any deductions we missed, and we’ll amend it for you” letter from the IRS. But instead, Americans are forced to calculate their own taxes, (even though the IRS already knows how much they owe), which means every American is annually reminded of how much income they’re “losing” to taxes every year.
In contrast, the rest of the fucking world uses post-tax income, because that’s how much money you can actually plan to take home. The taxes are a consideration, but if a job advertises €50k, it means the employee is taking home €50k. The taxes are more of a given, and are handled on the backend where the employee doesn’t need to worry about it. They apply for a job that makes €50k, and they know that’s how much they’ll take home. The taxes are already calculated for them, so they don’t need to worry about it.
Same for things like sales tax. If you see an item on the shelf for $1.00, it’ll actually ring up as $1.08 (or higher, if their state also has a sales tax) at the register. So Americans are constantly reminded of how much they’re spending in taxes, because every single purchase they make is noticeably taxed and hits their bottom line. Whereas Europe just lists the post-tax amount. So Europeans don’t need to worry about sales tax, because it is already factored into the cost of the item. If they see something on the shelf for €1.00, it will only cost €1.00…
I just wanted to clarify to everyone not familiar with it that most places in the US have a combination of state and local sales taxes, but no federal sales tax.
Still, adding semi-random taxes on top of the signed price is something that strikes me as surreal as a European. We have sales taxes, too, but it is always included in the advertized price.
Semi-Random?
Differing from town to town, state to state.
How is that random, people know how their town and state VATs
And then you are out of town for a change, and hit with a different price. Go on a road trip, visit your autie three states over, and get his with seven different levels of taxation on the way.
Wouldn't it be easier and honest to just put the real prices on the shelves? Just like any other country does?
Looks around confused in German
It's an interesting overall take still! But I am wondering now how income is handled in other European countries, I actually don't know.
I think you're missing something here; in the UK we also talk about pre-tax income.
It's important in lots of ways, for example you choose how much to pay into your pension, and you get tax relief on that.
If you just talk about post-tax income you would miss the enormous difference between someone who is on £54,350 and pays the minimum 8% into a pension (£50k taxable) and someone on £62,500 who pays 20% into a pension (£50k taxable). The second person is a lot better off overall, because they have saved £12,500 in their pension and the first person has saved £4,350, which compounds pretty quickly.
Yes, thank you! I agree taxes allow us to have nicer things than we could afford individually. The problem is how our tax money is spent, on things like those fucking private/public ventures where the municipality builds the stadium, and some jackoff gets billions from it