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Yep, move to Sweden and he'd be shelling out some 90k to put $44000 in his employees pockets (46% payroll tax, 5-15% social security, then 30% income tax on that).. And then there's the 25% sales tax.

Yeah, and employees in Italy and Scandinavian countries get a metric butt-ton more government services for their money.

Not to turn this into an argument about what government should be doing; don't care, irrelevant. The point is simply that you do get a lot for giving up ~50%+ of your paycheck in those countries. Here, you just give up whatever you give up (your figure doesn't take into account sales taxes, excise taxes, use taxes, property taxes, etc.)

Coming from Finland, this was my first reaction too.