Trump’s acceptance speech was full of lies and untruths, but one that drove me up the wall was when he said:
America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.
The reason it drives me up the wall is that it’s not only false, it’s precisely the opposite of the truth. In fact, America is one of the LOWEST taxed developed nations in the world. Yet this lie is constantly repeated by Republicans, and they are almost never called on it by members of the media. I thought it might be useful to provide the actual facts here, so that members of this community can use them the next time some Republican tries to repeat this lie. Here is a list of all OECD member countries by total tax revenues (all levels of government) as a percentage of GDP. The figures are for 2013, which is the last year for which complete figures are available for all countries
Denmark 47.60%
France 45.03%
Belgium 44.66%
Italy 43.88%
Finland 43.74%
Sweden 42.85%
Austria 42.48%
Norway 40.50%
Luxembourg 38.42%
Hungary 38.37%
Slovenia 36.78%
Netherlands 36.68%
Germany 36.52%
Iceland 35.95%
Portugal 34.51%
Greece 34.42%
Czech Republic 34.26%
OECD Average 34.16%
United Kingdom 32.93%
Spain 32.70%
Poland 31.93%
Estonia 31.84%
New Zealand 31.37%
Israel 30.57%
Canada 30.54%
Slovak Republic 30.37%
Japan 30.31%
Turkey 29.27%
Ireland 29.03%
Australia 27.50%
Switzerland 26.86%
UNITED STATES 25.41%
Korea 24.30%
Chile 19.98%
Mexico 19.69%
Data can be found at this link: data.oecd.org/...
If Mr. Trump would like to know why other developed countries have shiny new airports and highways with less potholes than ours, and the whole host of other things in which he compared us to other countries, and why we have a big budge deficit, it’s clearly NOT because our taxes are too high. It’s because we have voters who have believed the magic thinking of Republicans that we can simultaneously cut taxes, spend money on things like a huge wall, the best highway, railroads, airports, schools and military, and reduce the federal deficit.