The personal website of Matt Henderson.
22 February 2015
The US tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is about 35%. In this article, Phil Greenspun points out that Obamacare, which forces citizens to purchase health insurance, isn’t materially different than European governments forcing citizens to pay extra tax to covers the cost of state-provided health care.
So if you consider Obamacare as a tax, the US tax revenue as a percentage of GDP increases to over 50%, such that the US would be more government-dominated than Sweden, Germany, Greece, or the U.K., and roughly in the same ballpark as France and Denmark.
And that would imply that the private sector of the US (that part of GPD not generated by government) is quite small, which in theory should act to impede growth—making the US a less attractive place to invest.
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