Welfare and Tax Systems

For the beginning of this new unit we learned about the American Welfare and Tax system. The U.S. social welfare structure has been shaped both by long standing traditions and by changing economic and social conditions. In welfare, the poverty line for poor people in the United States is 1,400. For many of those who are under this poverty line can be provided with many free programs provided for those who are poor such as food stamps, free child day care centers and many more then imagined. Two key vocabulary words that were brought up is charity and solidarity. The difference between the two is that charity is when someone feels sorry for another person as solidarity is when people work together to help get ahead. A few key vocabulary I learned from learning about the tax system is Flat Tax, Regressive Tax, Progressive Tax. All which describe a little part of different tax systems in the United States. First, a Flat tax is a system that taxes everyone at the same rate, regardless of their income bracket whether you are poor or rich. The tax bracket system is the system of how someone is taxed based of their individual income levels. So those who have a lower income will be in a lower bracket in which pay a lower tax rate. A regressive tax system is a system in which poor people must pay higher percent of income then rich people. For example if a person is buying a product and the tax on the product is one dollar and person a has ten dollars and buys the product his income would be 10% as if a had twenty dollars in his pocket to buy the product of $1 tax his income would be 5%. A progressive tax system is when rich people pay a higher percent of income than poor people. And effective taxes is how much tax payers are taxed despite the bracket system.

I was not present when the Danish Students presented facts about their Danish tax system. With a little research on the Danish tax system I first found that everyone who lives in Denmark must pay tax if they receive any sort of income. In Denmark you have to pay almost any sort of tax to property tax if you are a home owner, corporate tax if you are a owner to a company, and even church tax from the church. Similar to the tax system in the United States the Danish have to pay tax for a number of goods such as cars, petrol, alcohol and tobacco, etc. As a employee in Denmark tax is taken directly from at the source of your employment before receiving a salary. As a Danish person there is almost never a time where someone is unemployed because if there is a person that is unemployed and seeking work the system will try to automatically assign you another job. In the United States there are many programs that can assist with finding people jobs but it may not be as easy as those who are in need of jobs with so little experience end up with very low paying jobs. Compared to the United States the Denmark tax system is more of a progressive tax system, how much a person pays depends on the income and tax allowance of that person. The purpose of this system is to ensure that those who earn most contribute most towards society which is what apparently the united states is trying to do, but we will have to see what the outcome of the United States will be. In my opinion I think that even though the Danish tax system may be a little higher in taxing on things but adopting to the fact that the government are there to provide you with a job when unemployed would definitely benefit a lot of those in America and help those who are hopeless and at least help those get up to the poverty line to be able to afford food and shelter.