Maastricht Treaty revisions needed?

[kandrathe]

So, not cheap. Denmark, and Northern Europe generally, is an expensive place to live. But also a place with high salaries, high equality, and a fantastic standard of living.

I saw a survey recently of OECD Taxation, (vs take home pay). Denmark is not that different from some higher tax states in the US.

In answering an earlier jab you made at the insanity of Americans and taxes; I would define one kind of liberty (economic liberty) as the ratio of how much of your earnings you are allowed to keep. I believe that if the government (or some other land lord) takes 100% then we are essentially slaves to the State. If the State takes 56% away without recourse, then we are only partially enslaved. Our economic power is diminished by the same amount, and thereby our ability to divert our power in favor of change, or against the government is diminished by that same amount.

In fact, you have situations in the US now where the very money that special interests use to coerce political change are derived from taxes. This is a self feeding spiral of government decay and corruption. More government leads to more money being given to advocacy groups that build more government. An example of this is seen in California, with their government employees unions. We have a nursing strike going on here in Minnesota. I'm not sure where the unions think the money is going to come from, businesses are going bankrupt or leaving, people are bankrupt and about 1/7th of families in the US are losing their homes, and most of the States governments are swimming in red ink. In Minnesota, our legislatures did the very brave act of pushing off the problem into the next legislative session, where the problem will be twice as big.