It's interesting that France has a strong yacht and pleasure-craft industry, and many spiffy marinas. Yet the €15bn a year in tax cuts to the wealthy handed out by Sarkozy since 2007 have had no notable stimulus effect on the economy...
But any of you out there who enjoy relaxed sailing, the Finnish archipelago is THE place to go. Every summer in Finland I meet happy Dutch, French and Italian sailors who have discovered the secret. There are thousands of pink granite Pre-Cambrian islands wallowing like hippopotamii in the Baltic waters off Åbo.
To go to an uninhabited island, scour the beaches for driftwood, light a fire and with a steel plate on legs over the fire, cook some fresh bread and sausages, is the closest I've ever come to Nirvana. You can't be me, I'm taken
Add to this something like another 5 % tax above a certain income, and another 5 % on top of that. This tax goes to the central state.
Then there is a hidden tax called employers fee which is something like a third extra on top of the cumulative income taxes. It finances pensions and stuff like that IIRC.
And then there's the 25 % VAT, 30 % capital returns tax and the small property fee, the huge taxes on gasoline, tobacco, alcohol, power and so on which also finance the central government. Inheritance and wealth taxes have been abolished.
What the current government has done is essentialy increased the basic tax free income discount, which has resulted in radical income tax reductions for low and medium income earners, as a proprtion of their income tax receipt. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Tax rate on Y axis, monthly income on X axis. Green is income tax rates in 2006, red is 2009 without the tax cuts, blue is 2009 with the tax cuts.
One krona is 0.1 euros, so just split the incomes above by 10 to get it in euros.
The rates above is without the hidden employers fee tax, which increases the tax sum by 31.42 %. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
I just wanted to compare it to what we have in NY State.
