Rant: I am very very very annoyed with a lot of people saying “oh, Europe doesn’t innovate. You should move to the US / UAE if you want to start a business. They tax you so little and there is nowhere near as much regulation.” and then, sometimes in the same paragraph, say “it’s so nice to spend time in Italy / France / Germany / Poland / Romania / etc, I feel so relaxed here. The roads are nice and the amenities are wonderful. Have you seen that really cool fountain in Rome?”.
If you want your business in the US, then endure the lack of healthcare, the lack of happy people, the lack of communal spaces, the easy access to guns for everyone, etc. Sure, Europe can definitely do better to support small businesses, to encourage innovation in some domains. But if all you want is the peace of mind for yourself and your children, but want it without you doing anything for it (yes, taxes are meant to, you know, help with these things), then you just want to be a parasite.
Taxes are theft only if they don’t get reinvested into the well-being of the community. I will happily continue to pay high tax rates if it means I can drink the tap water without risks, if the electricity is flowing, if the nearby trees and parks are maintained and if there’s a healthy number of happy businesses around me for the various bits that I care about.
Oh, and a lot of those regulations protect us from extremely malicious people in charge of really bad companies. If they could poison you to get an extra cent out of you, they would. And, often, without regulation, they do.
This rant sponsored by the n-th LinkedIn post that parroted those views.
