but 31k isn’t a livable salary in the country by my metrics that being said (…) Even if you made 31k with 0 tax I don’t see how that would be livable
Yeah it isn’t.
still not worth breaking tax system because idk what other welfare you all have but losing free health care would make your country worse off
Probably not, but you’re still assuming that the “free healthcare” works while in fact it doesn’t.
other welfare you all have
You pay an extra 11% of your income for social security that will give you a retirement pension (assuming the fund doesn’t go bankrupt), unemployment protection (around minimum wage for a period of time) and that’s about it.
Why we have progressive rates. A flat tax will still make a 31k persons life more miserable in this country the lower tax ranges need to be adjusted. In America if you don’t make enough money we send you money. Almost like a ubi. 100k people won’t be hurt if more money they make is taxed.
Paid health care is way worse. I already 1.4% for old people healthcare(I don’t get access to) and I pay around 4.5% weekly to health insurance that I can’t use until I spend $6,000 in healthcare services and still have to pay money to see doctors. In America so many people go without insurance or just die because they can’t get things taken care of.
Most articles say Portugal healthcare is better or on par with America’s system for patient outcomes. But what the article don’t mention you have be able to afford to get into the system in America. I haven’t visited a doctor in 15 years.
A guaranteed pension is super strong versus a retirement plan that is in the stock market because a crash could wipe out the whole fund.
Lastly why isn’t the rich not paying more in salaries and why isn’t money more equitable In Portugal?
Paid health care is way worse. (…) Most articles say Portugal healthcare is better or on par with America’s system for patient outcomes.
It may be but at the same time since COVID our healthcare has been a total mess. Waiting lists are crazy, sometimes you can’t get simple tetanus vaccines or you can’t get healthcare unless it’s something really urgent because there aren’t any doctor to attend you on a regular basis.
Have a look at this https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2022-05-03/hospital-waiting-times-concerning-portuguese/66794 and https://www.statista.com/statistics/1477807/portugal-waiting-time-by-medical-specialty/. When you’ve to wait 120 days for a cardiology consultation you’ll most likely die in the meantime. There are a lot of cases of people waiting months or even years for simple surgeries.
A guaranteed pension is super strong versus a retirement plan that is in the stock market because a crash could wipe out the whole fund.
Well the thing is that we don’t really know how guaranteed it will be and what values we will be talking about in a few years. Maybe minimum wage for everyone independently of the money you payed each month of your working life - it’s looking a lot like that and that’s not fair at all.
Lastly why isn’t the rich not paying more in salaries and why isn’t money more equitable In Portugal?
Because it’s hard for most companies to pay employees 30k or more. Consider this, for a 30k income the employee will pay 37-43% income tax + 11% social security, then the employer pays another 11% among other useless crap and legal compliance stuff.
To be fair if you look at millionaires in Portugal the biggest majority came from somewhere else. It’s really hard to make money in these economic context, people have almost no disposable income it’s a race to the bottom in every market, large monopolies rule over sectors backed by corrupt politicians.
The country needs more entrepreneurs and businessman but they can’t survive the corporate taxes, crazy interests on loans and all the crazy regulations put in place to gatekeep new companies from the market.
It is the same in the usa for healthcare unless you can spend money. Sometimes people will save for a year so they can take a day or week off for surgery.
Sounds like less of a tax problem and more of a things are to expensive problem. Or government needs to regulate more problem and you have corrupt politicians. All these companies are profitable right? Then they can pay more.
Let me give you an example of how pathetic things are: there aren’t many houses however there’s a lot of space to build but building is expensive because you’ve to get a bunch of licenses and fulfill a lot of requirements.
One of those is you’ve to submit a project for a gas boiler and stove even if you don’t plan to install and use those. Even more ridiculous, if the place where you’re building doesn’t have the public infrastructure to deliver natural gas to you then you’re still required to deliver. A project like this may add 10-20k to your total cost for no reason and without it you won’t be allowed to build the house.
10k seems small on a house but if you start pilling bullshit requirements like that you’ll reach 50k or more in useless stuff. You also have construction permits and whatnot.