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Also, on a purely pragmatic note, capital is mobile. If you penalize the rich, they just move, and then the new system will stop class mobility.
Mississippi has a GDP per capita of $53k.
11% of Mississippi's population has no health insurance.
Mississippi is one of the highest inequality states in the US. Its median income is $30k. It's Gini Index is 49%.
It has poor physical and social infrastructure by advanced country standards.
Spain has a GDP per capita of $35k. Its median income is $20k.
Everyone in Spain is covered with modern healthcare.
Spain has a nationwide high speed rail network. A lot of its infrastructure is top-notch compared to Mississippi and even wealthy parts of the US.
This is despite Spain having some of the highest inequality in Europe, and undoubtedly a host of other problems, including decreasing affordability for average people. Yet it's inequality is far lower than Mississippi, with a 31% Gini Index.
So perhaps GDP per capita doesn't tell the full story. Also, I'm being fair by comparing Mississippi to one of the poorer countries in Europe, not one of the middle or wealthier countries.
As do I. They all seem to have moved to cosmopolitan places with advanced economies, not Mississippi. I also have friends and relatives that have migrated to Spain. Overall, there is no mass migration in either direction.
> The situation you describe is… one of statistics and not reality
A high speed rail network and universal healthcare are not statistics, they are as real as it gets.
But I definitely agree that Spain is probably not a good place if you want to make an absolute shitload of money.
Statistics might not be ideal, but making policy decisions based on anecdotes is far, far worse.
Quality of life, by a number of metrics like HDI, is higher in (Western) European countries compared to the US. And even while total salaries might be lower, healthcare infrastructure, life expectancy, food quality etc are better.
Pure take-home money doesn’t tell you the entire picture.
And for pure anecdata, I have friends who migrated to the States and then moved back to EU when they had kids because EU seemed like the safer and better place to raise them.
You can find anecdata to tell pretty much any story you want to tell though.
I have excellent 0€ out of pocket 0 paperwork healthcare. I walk to my 35 hours per week job. I have about 50 days of vacation each year. I have a small second home down in the beach to enjoy them. In my 150k people hometown some years there is a murder or two, and most years there isn't one. When people rob a business they might threaten with a tiny Swiss Army knife, or maybe just yell very hard.
I'll stay thanks.