Service provision relies on significant tax levels

Perhaps not the most incisive piece of social commentary from the great US songwriter Randy Newman but you get the gist: “If you lived in Norway you’d be fine right now. Get sick there, you make the doctor wait”, writes Brian Keegan. 

Do other countries provide better services for their citizens? Is the so-called Scandinavian model of high tax, high benefits really the way to go?

US president Donald Trump doesn’t think so. In a tax policy speech some weeks ago, he repeated the claim that American citizens know better how to spend their money than Washington does. The irony of the president’s comments was that in a speech calling for political consensus on lowering taxes in the US, he omitted to mention that the US is one of the most lightly taxed jurisdictions in the developed world.