After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.
His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.
But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.
Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.
I just wanted to clarify to everyone not familiar with it that most places in the US have a combination of state and local sales taxes, but no federal sales tax.
Still, adding semi-random taxes on top of the signed price is something that strikes me as surreal as a European. We have sales taxes, too, but it is always included in the advertized price.
Absolutely! It’s always a drag, especially on high-priced items, to be hit with a big amount in taxes when you check out. I’m sure that this was pushed by the anti-tax crowd in the US to keep how much people are paying in taxes front and center.
Semi-Random?
Differing from town to town, state to state.
How is that random, people know how their town and state VATs
And then you are out of town for a change, and hit with a different price. Go on a road trip, visit your autie three states over, and get his with seven different levels of taxation on the way.
Wouldn’t it be easier and honest to just put the real prices on the shelves? Just like any other country does?
Where do the 7 random taxations come from? They basically have the same taxes depends how far you travel but its mainly the value that changes and even that by a couple percent more or less. Oh no I thought this item will be $1.58 more expensive than I thought oh no this will encouraged me to hate the tax system and become so angry that I have to constantly shoot up schools and kill myself to cope. I’m honest to god there are real problems in this country right now and that is not really one of them.
I agree that this is not the most pressing problem, indeed. But it is an artificial problem that could easily be solved by just putting the actual price on the tag instead of letting people do the calculation.