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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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I'm an American who has been living in Turkey for many years.
In Turkey, the political leaders in both sides of the aisle tell you not to pay income tax or property tax or payroll tax or any of the normal things Americans complain about. What is the result? An iPhone costs more than $3k. A ford focus that costs about $20k new in the US is over $50k in Turkey. EVERY package you receive is opened by the post office and inspected to see how much they can tax you. If you leave Turkey and want to bring the things you bought with you, you are taxed an exit fee.. You can potentially be charged three or four times for the same item.
Whenever I hear Americans bitching about taxes it drives me insane. They have no idea what they're asking for. The government needs money to function and they are going to get it one way or another..
Not only does the government needs money, services centralized in the hands of the government end up costing less because they have a monopoly and they don't run them for a profit! Over here road insurance is private only for the vehicle, our insurance as today users (you know, the stuff that costs a fortune to insure because breaking both legs costs more to the system than whatever car you're driving) costs peanuts in comparison to places where it's the private sector that controls it (if I lived across the border from where I am my registration + insurance cost would be double what it is now).
Trains aren't important because they make a lot of money. Trains are important because they make the land around them worth a lot of money. Businesses near train stations get more customers. People pay more for houses near train stations. Cities with strong transit systems have a higher GDP.
Despite this, England privatised its rail system and expects the rail companies to make a profit. Instead, English people are poorer and the government has less money.
I have a dear friend from Docklands in London, who ran trains. We argue constantly about privatisation vs a government-run consolidated service like healthcare. He's adamant that a mass transit system has to be run as a separate capitalist company, that it must be cash-positive, and that's the only way to do it.
He also believes the Tube is overpriced, cramped, sweaty, and a really low value for money that is propped up by people who can't afford to drive into London nor park once they arrive, and have no other choice.
Fun fact: Japan has privatised rail. The reason is works in Japan is that the rail companies own the land around the stations and charge rent on it
Most of the Japanese rail companies are subsidized to the hilt from mass bankruptcies and financial collapse.
Where I live privately owned utility companies provide much cheaper services than govt. Also govt is very bad at providing them consistently (if people outside of big city lose electricity for example, they have to go and block nearest highway, otherwise govt just ignores their complaints)
I guess monopoly might be beneficial for some period of time but ultimately it's bad, both in private and public sector.
where is that?
Ukraine
seems like rather exceptional circumstances at the moment, no?
Everything I described happened even before full scale invasion
how much heavy lifting is the phrase "full scale" doing in this sentence? when did this actually start?
I understand that the government needs money to function, I just want them to stop taking 30%+ of my income in order to buy billion dollar boats that shoot million dollar bullets.
I'm okay with the 30% so long as they stop using it to buy more and more expensive toys to murder brown children with. We're not getting what we pay for as a society, but the idea that we can make that right by privatizing everything is ridiculous and just continuously doesn't work.
Sidenote: part of the reason those things cost SO much more is because they're also no longer domestic products. They're now imports, such as Americans paying more for Mercedes Benz than you would in Germany.
One of my favorite examples of this is Starbucks. The already psychotic 6 dollar drink in the US is 9 dollars in Thailand 😳
What you said about Turkey is mostly true. Your causality is wrong. The reason Turkey is absurdly expensive and full of taxes is extreme amount of corruption caused by radical islamist government going full nepotism. Our head of economy was literally the groom of Erdogan for so many years.
Disclaimer: I am a Turkish dude who haplens to be an economics PhD student.