[way off topic] Re: Munich completes move to linux

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>

| On Sun, Jun 02, 2013 at 09:30:25AM -0400, William Muriithi wrote:

| > Sweden, Finland
| 
| They are not doing well.  Their cost of living (housing, car, fuel,
| food, etc.) are all expensive.  They introduced broad welfare system in
| 70s and 80s (you may be basing your impression from that), but they got
| off that.  For example, they cut off assistance if you don't take 1st or
| 2nd job offer (2nd hand info).  Their GDP is $0.5T and $0.2T, while
| Canada and US are $1.8T and $15T, respectively. (T=Trillion).  If you're
| arguing GDP per capita, I'd counter by saying Qatar and UAE are doing
| better than Sweden and Finlan by having no tax at all.

If you are NOT doing this calculation per capita, Finland's taxes are
pretty small compared with Canada's: our taxes are roughly triple their
whole GDP.  So I'd say that that approach is not too useful.

Here's a table of Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP:
  <http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=21699>

These days, for many governments, the government expenditure as a
percentage of GDP is significantly higher that revenue.

Denmark has backed off the least on revenue, apparently.

The rise and fall of these percentages over the years is interesting.
Look at Canada in 1965!  If my memory serves, the recent shrinkage
corresponds with a growth in deficit (all levels of government).

Our health-care funding system isn't great EXCEPT when compared with
the US one.  Our 6% higher percentage tax revenue might reflect how
health care is funded (not sure).  Their health care took something
like twice the percentage of GDP compared with ours.
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