>>but they are based on weighing personal freedom above all else
and this is largely the primary difference between American Culture /Politics and the rest of the world, specifically European nations
European nations have always been more collectivist in nature, where the US was founded on Individualism, and Individual Freedom.
There are signs that the US is losing this desire, and it saddens me because unlike you I do value personal freedom above all else, and I think the world needs a nation that continues to put personal freedom above everything else.
Perhaps they are losing this desire because it doesn't provide the well being it promises? Because personal freedom has become a meme abused by ultra rich to disable any effort to fix systemic problems in the US?
Except that is not true at all by any objective measure. [1]
The Ultra Rich do not use Personal freedom to disable efforts, it uses Government Regulation to disable efforts, the Rich LOVE big government why do you think many billionaires vote Democrat, it enables them to control the economy to ensure the poor are kept poor and dependent on government. In the end we should look to Smash the State, Eat the Rich, and expand personal freedom [2]
The framework of individualism vs. collectivism is a complicated (and pretty fraught!) sociological construct. Scholars hotly debate whether individualism/collectivism applies to individuals, societies, or some mix of the two. Individualism also exists along a spectrum (if it even exists at all!) While there might be some connection here, it seems a vast oversimplification of cultures/individual attitudes to say that GP's view on Finnish taxation mechanics is a direct result of individualism/collectivism.
Two important foundational works are Markus and Kitayama's Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation, and Triandis' Individualism and Collectivism. I am not a social psychologist so I don't have a really simple introduction that I can recommend (due to lack of familiarity!). But I have seen how, in a related field, overly simplistic and un-nuanced applications of what is actually a pretty complicated framework has lead to shoddy research and bad conclusions. That's why I called it out here.
> think the world needs a nation that continues to put personal freedom above everything else.
And you think that the US does that?
Exercising personal freedom necessitates having the material and mental resources to buy stuff, to be able to move from place to place, to change jobs, etc. It seems to me that a plausible proxy measure for personal freedom is social mobility, the likelihood that you will be better off than your parents. As far as I remember the country with highest social mobility is Denmark.
The US has pretty good Social Mobility as well, it is complete myth that the "rich" in the US is stagnate, most of the Billionaires in the US are 1st Generation Billionaires, this highlights there are income and social mobility.
As a personal anecdote, I am many times better of income and wealth wise than my parents even though we have the same education level and seemingly the same income opportunities, yet I have made better choices with my finances (learning from their [bad] example). My sibling is the same. One of my parents has zero retirement savings and will live off SocSec (likely with the assistance of me and my sibling). My other parent has slightly more savings but not by much and has lots of debt, both are within 5 years of SocSec retirement Age
> The US has pretty good Social Mobility as well, it is complete myth that the "rich" in the US is stagnate, most of the Billionaires in the US are 1st Generation Billionaires, this highlights there are income and social mobility.
Most economists of inequality dispute this. As measured by the likelihood that you'll earn more than your parents [1], or that you'll move up the income or wealth distribution compared to where you were born [2], the United States lags significantly behind most other developed nations. Social mobility in the United States is also lower than it has almost ever been.
[1] Chetty et al., The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940
> As a personal anecdote, I am many times better of income and wealth wise than my parents even though we have the same education level and seemingly the same income opportunities
Slightly off topic - I'd wager the overwhelming majority of the HN posters are signficantly better-off than their parents, solely by virtue of being tech-workers. We tend to forget, but at no point in capitalism's history has such a numerous caste of white-collar knowledge workers been so well compensated as we are now
In your case it may well be mostly because of better financial decisions (especially if you are orders of magnitude better off, which is hard to do without consistent investment in any case), but for most of us this is also true just by 'placement luck'
and this is largely the primary difference between American Culture /Politics and the rest of the world, specifically European nations
European nations have always been more collectivist in nature, where the US was founded on Individualism, and Individual Freedom.
There are signs that the US is losing this desire, and it saddens me because unlike you I do value personal freedom above all else, and I think the world needs a nation that continues to put personal freedom above everything else.