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Comment by pSYoniK | Hacker News Reader

One aspect that shocks me is someone complaining about having a 15.3% tax rate at an income of 84k/year. If your state is incompetent, corrupt and whatever else, its your duty as a citizen to do something about. Barring that, I guess paying less tax than the aprox 1.9 million Romanians getting paid minimum wage (aprox tax paid by a minimum wage employee is about 37%) while making about 3 times the average salary is still not good enough.

I appreciate the writeup and the thoughts on time and money, yet the complaints about taxation for someone making this much money in that country, cannot but ruin it a bit for me.

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All I can say is: you’d complain the same if you’d live in this country and be yelled at by every state employee just because you had the audacity to ask them a question, and by every doctor because you got suddenly ill and so on. Only bribe money buys their reluctant cooperation.

Don’t focus on the money, I could be making a million a year and it would still not fix the problem of life insecurity and overall sentiment of hopelessness.

My argument is that most peopl, the very mast majority does not have the same option to pay less tax as a percentage of their salary. Complaining about having a huge advantage over the majority, while suffering from the same problem does smell a bit of privilege.

I also do not necessarily like the implications you responded with, as I was discussing something you posted publicly about yourself and a detailed description you gave. I have made my choices and continue to make the choices I can. I understand I also benefit from huge amounts of priviledge and I try to use it to change what I can, not complain about it. I understand its frustrating and most importantly, the things you described show how dignity is being taken away from you, but imagine, for a second, how those millions making less than you feel. How they can't make any choice and if you do not lead by example from your position,if you, who sits so highly on Maslow's hierarchy, feel such injustice, what do those millions below you feel?

Anyway, thank you for sharing the details, it was an interesting read.

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