It all depends on what the aggregate deductions that are outside your control sum to, and what you get for the money.
In Ontario, it would be about 38%, and that’d include healthcare. Canada is very efficient though. At least a decade ago, Canada’s non-defense spending per person was less than the US’s.
In Germany it would be about 44% total. Of course, in Germany, $200k is a top 2% income. In California it’s only a top 8% income.
That's what's directly taken out of your check right? But how much more do you pay after that in other taxes? And if you go even further, how much higher are the prices of everything that you purchase due to the various taxes involved in their production?
On €100,000 a year you pay €57,512 in tax (58% tax). On €60,000 a year it's only €32,405 (54%).
See:
https://be.talent.com/tax-calculator?salary=100000&from=year...
https://be.talent.com/tax-calculator?salary=60000&from=year&...
Are there EU countries where you pay more than 60% for you make the "no more than 60% tax" sound like such a good deal?
AFAIK 60% is pretty much the top end of income tax rates as far as EU goes.
Also, in many EU states, companies contribute to social security. In some this is indexed to profits, but on others this is indexed directly to wages, so if you count that bit, taxes directly attributable to your income can easily exceed 60% of what a company pays out.
I don't know if Belgium is using that loophole when counting the 60%, though.
I have no idea about this. Can you explain what you mean and give some examples of such countries ?
>Also, in many EU states, companies contribute to social security. In some this is indexed to profits, but on others this is indexed into wages, so if you count that bit, taxes directly attributable to your income can easily exceed 60% of what a company pays out.
True. Some EU countries also tax the gross salary the employer has to give you before it gets to you, which is in bad faith not included in payslips. So when you negotiate your 60k gross wage, it's actually costing your employer something like 72k Euros. I hate this shady practice.
Their inward FDI stock to GDP ratio is around 250%, which is about 4× the EU average; and Ireland does this with a decently sized economy.
And then there's Luxembourg (1400%) and Malta (2000%) which arguably do much “worse” but are comparatively tiny.
I didn't do the math for every EU country. Those were just some of the few that came to mind. For instance, Cyprus has similar values to Ireland, but the Irish economy is 15× bigger.
When there's a lot of foreign money going through your economy and you can tax it to moderate amounts, you get to offer lower rates to your own citizens.
Which is great, but obviously doesn't scale if every country tries to do the same.
Probably countries like Ireland, Montenegro, Belize, etc which act as tax havens for foreign corporations. Or Singapore, while also a tax haven, acts as a center for regional trade.
They could also mean resource rich countries that sell mineral rights to foreign corporations, who made investments in infrastructure in order to facilitate their operations, and they pay back dividends to the state, which offset the tax burden of the local population.
If an American factored in the totality of their tax burden, it would be pretty high. The USA has the benefit of higher incomes and a gigantic population, so there's some economies of scale. But even so, add up all of income tax (federal, state, city, county), sales taxes, property taxes, tariffs, tolls, etc and the % is already pretty high. After factoring the cost of benefits that are free/subsidized in other countries, and the cost probably averages out to the same.
Of course, European countries can also have those same consumption taxes. But I'm not sure if OP factored that in.
These taxes you mentioned (ignoring income taxes) are even higher in many EU countries than the US, especially sales tax. Same for tolls, tariffs, etc. they're all higher here and they're increasing them and adding new taxes on top, because EU coffers are being bled dry right now with the economy, trade wars, and actual wars going on.
Also, commodity products and services are generally more expensive here than in the US too. Like, I see on youtube the hobby stuff Americans do in their garage with home labs, electronic measuring equipment, power tools and stuff, all gotten nearly for free on craigslist, but if I want to replicate their setups it would cost way more here(from a smaller wage too), not to mention buying a house with a garage in Europe is very much of out of budget to most working class in Europe to begin with.
All this stuff being so cheap and readily available is probably why Americans in their garages have been so much more inventive and entrepreneurial than Europeans.
>After factoring the cost of benefits that are free/subsidized in other countries, and the cost probably averages out to the same.
True, but a lot of free stuff you get back from the government is sometimes of low quality compared to what you pay for in taxes on a high income, due to never being enough money for everything everyone needs, and not being able to attract and keep qualified and motivated workers to stay in the public system when they can earn more privately, and it's only been getting worse and worse since Covid and Ukraine, with no signs of improving.
For example, I am now paying ~1000 Euros for private physiotherapy after my accident, since the free government one is abysmal, which I am forced to pay for anyway out of my salary even though it's useless.
Another example, after my jaw surgery at the public hospital here they just strap cold packs to your face like in WW2, while in the US, my ex-boss who went through a similar procedure at a hospital there they had specialized head cooling devices for your post-op recovery, instead of medieval ice packs, while also being free of charge from his employer insurance. So you might pay more in the US for health insurance, but you also get more in return.
Overall I think I'd still prefer living here than in the US, but there's valid reasons why immigration to the US, and especially the success of immigrants there from an integration and financial perspective, is so high compared to here despite all the issues the US has.
Is it possible to live middle class life on around 27K?
You can see the Belgian tax scale here:
https://fin.belgium.be/en/private-individuals/tax-return/inc...
And then of course quality of life, but that's very individual.
And today with the European white guilt it's full of Africans who hate not only their people , but European traditions and culture. This is the reality.
And Chicago had 2853 gun violence incidents in 2024. On a population of 2.7 million. Belgium had 184 incidents on a population of 11.8 million. That is about 67 times more incidents.
Wait a second friend, first you claim "basically no crime, no guns", then when confronted with the facts, instead of taking accountability and correcting, you move the goalposts to some high-crime US city.
I'm sure Brussels is super safe if you use Mogadishu as the point of comparisons, but if we were to keep the discussion in good faith and stick to comparisons with EU cities, my eastern european city has literally zero crime and guns making Belgium look like a warzone by comparison.
We have literally zero people killed by suicide explosives, guns or machetes compared to Brussels. How can people look at those crimes and go like "yeah, it's not so bad, you only have a relatively small chance of being killed" ?
OP is right, if those are the worst things to happen in the past 12 years, that's effectively 0 crime.
Especially when you consider that so much of what you listed were actually terrorists attacks conducted by an organization that hasn't conducted a foreign terror attack since winning control of their own territory from foreign occupiers.
If that's "zero crime" from your frame of reference, then what are the cities that have actual zero crime? -1000 crime? NaN?
I'd also be curious to know, if for example you or a family member would have been a victim in one of those violent incidents that don't happen in other EU cities, if you'd still have considered it "zero crime".
Is it one of those cases that when people see so much violent crime it's just a statistic that they had waive it easily? Because I can't.
Basically no crime was pretty obvious.
Then please argument using logic why it's obvious. I explained why it isn't oblivions, as per HN rules.
Subjectively sure, each to his own, it might be obvious to you if you're ideologically aligned with the poster, but for good faith debate, you'll need to add actual arguments to convince the other people of your take. Imagine telling the judge "it's obvious your honor" as your only argument to why you're in the right.
>As a passerby, I'm honestly not sure what pedantic hill you think you're dying on.
No hill dying here, I'm just pushing for facts over blind ideologies.
The post you replied to wasn't written in math or C, so you're trying to objectively disprove a qualitative statement.
In short: https://www.wheatonslaw.com/
And yes obviously there are guns in Belgian society but with no guns I was referring to how regular people don't walk around with guns. If you play football and your ball enters someone yard you don't have to worry about getting shot.
I believe their point was that Brussels is “super safe” compared to Chicago. 67 times fewer gun incidents is quite a lot.
I live in Dublin, Ireland, which is a lot smaller than Brussels, and when there is a shooting it gets on the news. You can imagine how amused I was coming from São Paulo that a full-on gang war was going on when I arrived here and 4 people had been shot in the previous year.
A friend of mine who also came from São Paulo, a trauma surgeon, had to change specialty here because there simply isn’t enough work.
(In fact, your life expectancy in Cook County is several years higher than in the rural south.)
The gun violence in Chicago is tightly constrained to places and populations unfamiliar to the median Belgian. Chicago is a city of neighborhoods and structurally segregated by almost a century of redlining and "urban renewal" that created hyperconcentrated pockets of crime. It's a human tragedy and fully worth dunking on, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with how safe a visitor would be to the city.
(Chicago is also not even in the top 10 in US cities by index crimes, but whatever).
If you insist to go this route, you can definitely find cities even in the US with less violent crime than Brussels.
If you look at places in US with similar white European demographics (New Hampshire at <2 per 100k) the homicide rate isn't that much worse than Belgium (~1.2 per 100k).
The best predictor of being a victim of violence in the USA is to be black, the ~second best predictor is to be in a state with a high proportion of black people. If you are in a state that is ~as white as Belgium, the rate goes way way down.
I expect small cities and towns in the suburbs, where native Belgians are a majority, to have virtually zero violent crime, which would flatten out the crime spike of Brussels into good looking national averages.
Can't blame him, US residency really is a like a game of high attrition. Its your classic up or out scenario.
Some times even a passport doesn't guarantee a stay. Sooner or later, you fall ill, lose a home, have a divorce. Its a unique combination of extreme luck, work, health and many other factors several of which are totally outside of your control.
You either win spectacularly or exit trying.
I also uploaded this news to hackernews (before discovering that this also existed) and the post I did wasn't flagged (atleast not right now)
I sincerely hope that healthy disucssions can take place in Hackernews and such articles shouldn't be flagged as they are important.
Edit: my post got flagged as well WHILE I WAS WRITING THIS COMMENT THIS IS CRAZY
Then you also see shit like these posts that touch on the admin in a negative light getting insta flagged and nuked off the front page.
What would you expect? The same kind of censorship, right? This is by design. The design can obviously be changed (e.g. don’t let only echochambery high karma accounts vouch for stuff).
This site has always had a bad faith flagging/downvoting issue; the bots might make it worse, but the culture was always there.
I am increasingly losing any desire for anonymous speech due to how much of my time ends up getting wasted talking to GPUs someone configured to throw more noise into the discourse
Flagging on the other hand to me on a post as such and other attempts genuinely sadden me because I was only able to discover this flagged post because people wrote about this article in the post I built which has also promptly got flagged.
I don't even know how else to say but I saw two people here in such discussions either worry about their wives or sons in laws and my heart goes out to them. Hackernews is a vast place but its still niche compared to tech giants, we are a community mostly built around each other and curiosity. Curiosity goes to dumpster fire if events like these happen and B) they are flagged by the same community we all think to be a part of.
I have been a vocal supporter of hackernews usually. Because I like the website but I am genuinely seeing it crack and you really never know what can get flagged because I genuinely didn't expect such posts to be flagged because of how valuable they are. I can't fathom why Hackernews might do this, When I had posted the comment it wasn't intended to be political but rather just a massive news development which impacts technological and actual people and geopolitics and I wanted people to discuss it in here on Hackernews for as so, give insights and have discussions.
Perhaps I am feeling hurt and that's because I am because "et tu brute hackernews?"
I then discovered that news.ycombinator.com/active (from one of the comments here, thank you c42) which can still show flagged posts.
I didn't know about the /active and I have been in this community for quite a long time and I didn't know that /active could show flagged posts so I am probably gonna create a tell HN about it
Sharing my sympathies to anyone who is troubled & personally impacted over this recent development. I hope humanity unites together and works for a more affordable & better future for the average person. Peace and hugs.
Edit: looks like someone already posted about news.ycombinator.com/active 5 days ago and so my attempt of post redirected to them but its all good
Found https://brutalist.report/source/hn this from the comment of razingeden which shows both normal and also flagged posts https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46559792&goto=item%3Fi...
I find that annoying myself. However, at the suggestion of another user, I began looking at https://news.ycombinator.com/active instead of the front page.
The "active" page (as its name implies) includes the most active discussions regardless of whether or not they've been flagged.
I find it to be a much better place to find stuff to discuss.
- the search page for the last 24H, with a list of both "title" keywords and "comment" keywords, based on how many results are appearing
- the comment histories of folks I have enjoyed.
I do this by modifying the query string in the URL field.
I am quite glad that these modes of finding content on the site take a little effort- I already have a 180min time out and it's not the healthiest way to try and find my news. This is, fortunately, the only social media site I am actively writing responses on, other than some message boards.
And I don't try to book mark my way through those keywords- I just have a set of stuff I find in comment threads I find interesting memorized and look for those threads ("measles", "salvador", "venazuela", "flock").
But I find it a lot easier to find general news and conversations I am curious about using that method.
The real tragedy is that this is fixable -- look at which accounts regularly flag inappropriately and shadow-ignore their flags going forward.
I am extremely annoyed at hackernews right now
wtf is happening. someone said nice try clanker bcause of my username like (wtf/)
This community is feeling more hostile and less trustworthy I am sorry to say that
1) your account was made post LLM access being widespread
2) you made this claim
> I am extremely annoyed at hackernews right now
> wtf is happening. someone said nice try clanker bcause of my username like (wtf/)
and when I go back through your comment history trying to find when that occurred, I got to over 8 days ago and no one ever used the word "clanker" in response to you.
The signal to noise ratio is at an all time low because of LLMs. If you are a real person, I guess that sucks, but I have a difficult time believing anything you say now
The irony in this whole situation is so ironical. I was mad at first but this is actually just sad + irony
Someone accuses me of being clanker for no apparent reason
I respond to them first madly and secondly calmly
Their post got flagged so you are now unable to watch it plus my comment
But I had commented about it in other comment too when it wasn't flagged (If I remember correctly) and now the additional context got flagged because of Hackernews and you are unable to find it on the internet/hackernews
So 2) can still be chalked up to misunderstanding but I genuinely believe that this is sad that you didn't ask me about it and assumed I was AI
And secondly how do I EVEN PROVE THAT I AM NOT AI.
So I was mad that I got called AI once and so I got called AI twice now... Um, (what the fuck?)
My account was created a year ago because I am a teenager. I created Hackernews account when I was 16. AI came when I was 14-15. What'd you expect me to do?
Of course some of this information is not public so there might be misunderstanding but holy cow.
I got accused of being AI because I commented how other person accused me of being AI which got flagged and they did it for not much apparent in depth reason
And now thanks for accusing me again, Yes I am mad again hope you understand why (so if I say something rude, I don't mean it but you have been rude in this post as well)
> The signal to noise ratio is at an all time low because of LLMs. If you are a real person, I guess that sucks, but I have a difficult time believing anything you say now
Okay, have a nice day, what'd you expect me to say?
But I must say that this level of distrust in this community is once again extremely painful to witness and genuinely hurts (in this case me) or others
Please apologize man if possible, I can answer your further questions but I cant tolerate someone calling my comments, the one thing I am pretty proud of and learned a lot out of, AI of all things. It's deeply hurtful because my identity is never reflected back on in the way I want.
I am still sure how to respond to you as well. On One hand I want to say some pretty mad things because I am mad, on the other I don't want to because I don't want to stoop to that level of civil indecency.
I am quite frankly out of words. I made a bluesky post about it with their post and my original comment but I quickly removed it because I dont enjoy controversy of any kinds but oh I wish to vent about hackernews online right now, just Wow.
I've said what I've said and I am proud of somewhat all comments of mine on hackernews as they reflect growth. That is a personal thing and uhh its sucks to see that this is happened. Your post has made me reflect back if I want to be part of this community again, on one hand its full of amazing software discoveries and I try to help others here as well with any knowledge I might have and ask questions in genuine curiosity and this is what I get.
This is not okay man. I am just really sad right now to see the state of distrust. I don't even know what to say
I guess this first hand experience shows me how artists feel when their work gets called AI I suppose, trying to take something positive out of this I must admit, pretty negative experience for the past few days on hackernews
You typed a lot and I’m not responding to all of it, but for this specific point
> And secondly how do I EVEN PROVE THAT I AM NOT AI.
You cannot do so anonymously anymore now that silicon can pass the Turing test convincingly. I can’t do it either. Trust was already at an all time low on the internet and now it’s completely cratered.
I personally have come around to believing that our technological progression has made widespread anonymous speech in public to be a net negative. Not as a symptom of the times but as a permanent change to human societies. I am still for free speech but I think we need to have human identity tied to the speech or we will end up in a world where you can have all the speech you want, and humans won’t see it. You’ll be making statements to machines who then try and manipulate you back, and can be deployed en masse at speeds humans can never match.
That or we make impersonating humans on the internet a crime with the death penalty and deal with the few people willing to risk that for whatever reason.
How about a flagged section?
What about a feature to challenge the flag?
What about a justification for the flag? Do flagged posts need to be approved by a mod?
I love HN. Flagged posts are the worst part. I can’t tell if the community is being taken over by a subset of bad actors, or YC is asserting opaque editorial control. Feels bad.
Use this link as your HN homepage and enable "showdead" on your profile
The purpose of a system is what it does. If the end result is the same, is there a difference?
Try posting a negative story on anything related to Musk
It's always worrying seeing news like this.
This really cuts into who can attend it.
Though since they no longer do the 5 days thing and just invite people at the office for a couple of days- might not even make sense.
https://metro.co.uk/2025/11/28/full-list-nationalities-lose-...
The US government now has an explicitly racist immigration policy. (True at many points of US history, but we'd managed to avoid doing it for a bit)
This is genuinely bugging me right now as to how or even why Hackernews would try to curb this information.
Most likely will be unfrozen in couple of weeks. The real question is about new rules and how much harder it will be to get in.
Does the US currently allow immigrants who are likely to become a "public charge"? The UK has not for a very long time (at least a few decades) and many other countries will not either.
Providing evidence that the applicant is unlikely to become a public charge is an important part of most visa and green card applications. Form I-864 is an Affidavit of Support where a sponsor (usually the family member or employer sponsoring the visa or green card) promises to financially support the applicant.
If the U.S. really does have a problem with lots of visa and green card holders becoming public charges, it's not because their application process doesn't directly address the issue.
For what it's worth, 15 countries have qualified, 10 countries are still in the running for qualification for the FIFAWC26 on that list of 75 countries.
This could just be an attempt to frame (what is in effect) a serious customer support failure as a deliberate policy decision.
A possible good reason might be that there is a higher level of fraud (e.g. faked financial statements), or a higher level of public charge in applications from some countries - especially if it is a pause while procedures are changed. On the other hand the true motive might be something else.
That said, I have no idea why its this particular list of countries. Why Thailand or Jamaica or Nepal?
I don't think individualized determination are even possible. Unless you take very few people from each country, they'll inevitably find each other and form communities. And the kinds of communities they form will be driven by their cultures. The question isn't "would this one Bangladeshi be a good immigrant." It is "when 100,000 Bangladeshis inevitably form a cultural enclave in some city, will that be better or worse than what was there before?"
"Immigrant visa processing from these 75 countries will be paused while the State Department reassesses immigration processing procedures to prevent the entry of foreign nationals who would take welfare and public benefits,"
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-suspend-visa-processing-...
You do realize that discrimination by citizenship is conducted by basically every government on earth in the context of visas and tourism and residency?
In fact, what made the US so bizarre up until about 1914 was that they were the only major country that effectively had open borders. There was no welfare state to take advantage of back then, and you literally did have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
This only started to shift after the US began constructing its welfare state (welfare state expansion correlates with increasingly closed immigration policy, hence where we find ourselves today).
The first step for genocide is to dehumanize people.
They're not humans, they're aliens. Therefore it's fine if we treat them as filth and throw them away (or gas them).
> The whole difference between being a native an an alien is the rights you get.
A knee jerk and uncharitable reading might make this look bad, but it does require an uncharitable reading. It is clear what you mean.
However, the claim
> It's not a human right to be able to freely go into any country you please.
is not false. The idea that open borders are a good thing is a very odd idea. It seems to grow out of a hyperindividualistic and global capitalist/consumerist culture and mindset that doesn't recognize the reality of societies and cultures. Either that, or it is a rationalization of one's own very domestic and particular choices, for example. In any case, uncontrolled migration is well-understood (and rather obviously!) as something damaging to any society and any culture. In hyperindividualistic countries, this is perhaps less appreciated, because there isn't really an ethnos or cohesive culture or society. In the US, for example, corporate consumerism dominates what passes as "culture" (certainly pop culture), and the culture's liberal individualism is hostile to the formation and persistence of a robust common good as well as a recognition of what constitutes an authentic common good. It is reduced mostly to economic factors, hence globalist capitalism. So, in the extreme, if there are no societies, only atoms and the void, then who cares how to atoms go?
The other problem is that public discourse operates almost entirely within the confines of the false dichotomy of jingoist nationalism on the one hand and hyperindividualist globalism on the other (with the respective variants, like the socialist). There is little recognition of so-called postliberal positions, at least some of which draw on the robust traditional understanding of the common good and the human person, one that both jingoist nationalism and hyperindividualist globalism contradict. When postliberalism is mentioned, it is often smeared with false characterization or falsely lumped in with nihilistic positions like the Yarvin variety...which is not traditional!
Given the ongoing collapse of the liberal order - a process that will take time - these postliberal positions will need to be examined carefully if we are to avoid the hideous options dominating the public square today.
Passports were not common until the 20th century. Until then borders were mostly porous.
There did use to be other cases some people couldn't leave a geografic confines, they used to call them serfs.
>uncontrolled migration is well-understood (and rather obviously!) as something damaging to any society and any culture.
The US was built on unrestricted immigration for a long time. Was that destructive? I guess so if you count native Americans but not to the nation of USA.
Capitalism wants closed borders to labor and open borders to capital. Thats how they can squeeze labor costs while maximizing profits. The US is highly individualistic but wants closed borders so how does your reasoning align with the news?
The U.S. takes in millions of immigrants a year. At that scale, it's not a question of the individual merits of a single immigrant from a country. It's about the merits of the community that will be formed when 100,000 immigrants from that country come to the U.S. and settle in the same place and socialize their children into their culture. And the evidence we have is that, when that happens, they'll bring with them a lot of characteristics of their origin countries.
That’s quite different from mass immigration.
The USA is also supposed to host the World Track & Field Championships for under-20 in Eugene Oregon this summer.
see https://www.letsrun.com/news/2026/01/world-cross-country-cha...
Nobody wants to just hear US citizens chanting 'Defence, Defence' all the time.
Hugo Calderano, the third best table tennis player in the world, is denied an entry visa to the USA. Thus, the Brazilian misses the prestigious tournament Grand Smash in Las Vegas. https://swedenherald.com/article/hugo-calderano-denied-us-vi...
Ethiopian athletes denied U.S. visas ahead of 2026 World Athletics Cross Country Championships https://amileaminute.com/news/ethiopian-athletes-denied-us-v...
Vancouver Whitecaps split with left back Ali Adnan following extended visa issues https://rdnewsnow.com/2021/07/03/vancouver-whitecaps-split-w...
A sizable chunk of the HN userbase is All-In on the Trump cult. They try to bury anything that questions the infallibility of the administration.
Relax.
FIFA will ignore unlimited human suffering but if matches don't happen it might be a problem.
When the World CUp was assigned to the US during Trump first term one of the implied things was that he'd be long gone in 2026
Nobody could have possibly predicted 12 years of Trumpism and pulling a Grover Clevalend by skipping a term and getting re-elected
Good question. Which is likely another reason for more ticket cancellations[0].
[0] https://www.financialexpress.com/sports/fifa-calls-for-emerg...
The list includes Russia, Iran, lots of RU-aligned nations, and a bunch that probably have security issues.
The only one that stood out as odd was Thailand.
Also, Georgians are one of the nations with the most asylum claims in Europe, and that's not even per capita.
> "The Trump administration is bringing an end to the abuse of America's immigration system by those who would extract wealth from the American people," State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said. "Immigrant visa processing from these 75 countries will be paused while the State Department reassesses immigration processing procedures to prevent the entry of foreign nationals who would take welfare and public benefits," he said.
Since the Indian diaspora is famously known to be the wealthiest on average in the US, they wouldn't be targeted under such reasoning.
Illegal immigrants used to be able to draw if they lived outside the US but the rules just changed so that may not be true anymore.
Citation needed.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
Go knock yourself out: social security, health, Medicare, income security, veterans benefits. If you want to exclude veterans benefits that’s fine too. Still 60%
Canada has a similar system, that discriminates disabled people for instance and most people are fine with it.[1]
Yes, the inflammatory wording is bad, but a points-based system would be a good improvement over the current situation.
[0] https://www.visaverge.com/news/us-suspends-visa-processing-f...
[1] https://immiquest.ca/how-the-canada-immigration-points-syste...
