Tax Dollars at Work

There have been robust political debates about tax policies and spending plans at the U.S. government, but the uncomfortable truth is that other countries seem to be making wiser decisions about both taking in money to the government and how that money should be allocated.  

Case in point: the most recent World Population Review ranking of the countries with the highest quality of life.  If you read nothing but U.S. political news, you might be under the impression that the countries with the lowest taxes and the stingiest government outlays would have the highest standards of living.  But then you look at the quality of life rankings and see just the opposite.  According to the World Population Review compilation of different factors, and different surveys, people living in high-tax, high government service countries like Luxembourg and the Netherlands have the best quality of life, measured at 200.10 on the WPR scale.   And it should be remembered that those countries are not as wealthy, per capita and overall, as America.

The same trend shows up as you move down the top end of the rankings, to Iceland (191.10), Denmark (190.60), Finland (188.10), Switzerland (185.80), Austria (183.30) and Norway (181.80).  The United States quality of life ranking is above average, at 173.00, just behind Spain (177.70), Estonia (176.40), Sweden (174.80) and the United Arab Emirates (173.80).  America can take solace that it is comfortably ahead of Malta (121.80), Kazakhstan (96.50) and Iran (77.60).  (And the United Kingdom at 164.20 and China at 105.10.)

Ideally, the purpose of a federal government is to collect taxes, and pool them to provide services for the community that are more valuable than what has been collected—making government a value-added resource.  The question we have to ask ourselves is: are our policies working as well in this regard as the policies at work in other countries?

Source:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/standard-of-living-by-country