the minimum wage 800 de lei = 234$ about 180 Euro
was increased 1st june 2013

Yeah, I don't know where bonuses came from but since many acquire it other businesses have to adapt which is a pity. At the same time a bonus is a good incentive to a better job than you're asked to do and your employer don't have to pay you the difference every month like a raise. The problem is the ludicrous amount, but vanity is a fickle bitch. It's hard to argue that we need to cut corners in all areas of soceity for a sustainable society if the people with money loses their assets and therefore their incentives to actually do a good job (or pretend to do.. j/k).

I think there are people with the required knowledge (or at least close to), it's just that there are different forces that push back and the knowledge to put the right minds together is a daunting task. For a business to make a profit they have to acquire a worker that is willing to work just a little under his own market value so that what he creates for his employer is worth more than he costs. To achieve this it becomes a complex task of making sure everything is taken advantage of so that they don't waste money and actually makes a profit and something else is hurt and it alls falls back to that economy, in the end, is a zero-sum game. To avoid this we'll need to rewrite laws and policies all over the world that will take centuries if not more depending on wars, culture acceptance, religions, new diseases etc..

As for as inflation is concerned that is something that is likely needed to be controlled at a fixed level or at least at a fixed range (like 2-3%) to avoid unnecessary fluctations that no one is prepared to deal with (taxes too FYI). This however will of course reduce the overall revenue a country makes or even the world and of what little I know of economics, so far that is usually not a good thing. It's like a profit is ideal and is expected, increased revenue is a must otherwise everything falls apart.

Sometimes I think, maybe it is also due to the size? For instance, I don't hate the Finnish government, but I have certain amount of distrust towards the EU "government", or any ideas to have such a thing.

Similarly, I don't mind paying high taxes in this small country (because I do feel they are used to help "our community"), but if EU started collecting taxes like some have suggested, I'd go apeshit for them taking my money to give it to the corrupt EU countries and EU officials.

When talking about countries of the size of Sweden or Finland, maybe it is better to compare to individual states in US, not the whole big country. Maybe the people living in Texas and NY don't feel that much more in common than people living in Finland and Portugal.

You do realize there's more than 2 dozen countries that don't have any taxation at all, right ?

I did realize that, I was just unclear in my wording. I meant of countries with taxation.

People on all sides of the debate will cherry-pick data to fit their particular narrative. I'm sure there's some category or measure of taxation in which the US is the third lowest among some selected set of countries. Always look for the fine print and the asterisk, and what exactly is being measured. Also be mindful of outright lies; often times "facts" get repeated often enough that no one questions them, but dig deep and it turns out they have no basis in reality.

Beyond that, taxes are difficult to measure because they're often obfuscated. Here in the Canadian province of British Columbia the government effectively controls all car insurance. They can (and often do) choose to raise premiums across the board, and technically this doesn't count as a tax increase even though it gets dumped into general revenues in the end. For all intents and purposes, it's a car tax. Don't expect it to get counted come election time when the government wants to show how much they've lowered taxes. That's an obvious example, but there are more subtle ones all around you if you look for them.

Everyone has their own rose-tinted glasses; take it all with a grain of salt, because all of them have a stake in the big tax game. And by and large, most people would be more than happy to dump their own share of the tab on others. Many do quite successfully.

Oh, those countries. We don't make eye contact wth them

Well to be fair, when the country was founded and for much of it's existence there was no income tax (passage of the 16th amendment allowed collection of income taxes) and the government functioned without issue. I've my own feelings on taxes, they don't align much with the TEA parties views or yours (given your post) for that matter.

Did you know many CEOs of big corporations pay themselves only a dollar in wages? Why? Because in the US their capital gains from stocks and stuff are taxed by their income tax rates.

That's not completely true. Capital gains are taxed at short term and long term rates which vary depending on income tax bracket. You might also be thinking of taxes on dividends, which don't require you to sell your capital (which can only be done once).

Except other first world nations actually provide for their citizens due to higher tax rates. Merica doesn't do shit for the middle class.

Does that still exist ?

In politician speak.

Last time I checked, allowing politicians to promote policies that blow more money (taxpayer, borrowed, and non-existent) on a bunch of bureaucracies that give whatever is leftover after the bureaucrats had their fill (paychecks and perks) to a growing number of welfare recipients was anything but patriotic or wise.

The TEA Party movement serves an important cause which is to prevent any additional tax hikes especially since many businesses do NOT get hit with the corporate tax but rather with the personal income tax which means every time a rich politician says "tax the rich some more," he/she is really saying "let's undermine a small business owner's ability to reinvest into domestic labor and capital resulting in only the larger incorporated businesses existing."

There is nothing shameful about standing up to centralized governmental overreach and demanding less bureaucratic spending and less regulatory overreach. Last time I checked, it was patriotic to question and challenge bad government policies.

Also, just because people are against high taxes, doesn't mean they are against no taxes. The claim that people who are against the IRS, tax hikes, and the tax laws are automatically in favor of abolishing all taxes is a strawman argument.

This basically sums up people who think that bowing before the government and obeying it's every will is patriotic:

http://grrrgraphics.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/shrine_of_the_statists1.jpg

Just looking purely at the marginal income tax rates for the US taxes aren't particularly high (the rates range from 10-40%), but there's a lot more to taxes in the US than just basic income tax rates. There's also the Social Security tax (6.2%) and Medicare tax (1.45%), then depending on where someone is living there may also be a state income tax (ranges fro 0-11%), state, county, and municipal sales taxes, along with property tax (if you own any property). Those are the main ones (counting capital gains as part of income taxes), but there are also some odd little ones you can come across from time to time. Overall the tax system in the US is rather Byzantine, and it can be tough to track down just what people are paying in taxes, but it can end up adding up to a significant percentage of one's income once everything is taken into account.

That said, I'm not personally bothered by how much I pay in taxes, but rather how little I get back in return (and this is something that bothers quite a few others in the US as well). For instance, at the federal level a tremendous amount of money is spend on the military, and many people aren't particularly happy with what we're getting back from all the spending. Also at both the federal and state level quite a bit of money is spent on healthcare, yet what we actually get in return for all that spending is laughable when compared to the healthcare other countries provide while spending significantly less (as either a percentage of GDP or a percentage of taxes). Basically the feeling of many is that all the taxes we pay are just getting pissed away without the citizenry getting much in return.

Another major criticism of taxes in the US is that the tax system is fairly regressive compared to many other tax systems across the world. Marginal rates in the US cap out much lower than marginal rates in many other countries, while some forms of taxes don't even have to be paid on income above a certain amount (for instance that Social Security tax I mentioned earlier is only assessed on the first $113,700 of one's gross income). Additionally, long-term capital gains taxes cap out at only 20% (capital gains comprise a much larger portion of the income for high-income individuals than for low-income individuals). Plus, due to how Byzantine the tax system is it typically works out that the more a person makes the more ways there are for them to avoid paying taxes. Thus it can rub people the wrong way that individuals making 10x or more the amount they make are paying a significantly lower percentage of their income in taxes.

Finally, again because of how Byzantine the tax system is, larger businesses can shift much of their reported income to countries with low applicable taxes (e.g. Ireland), even if almost none of that money was actually made there. Thus there's the feeling that such companies reaping the benefits that taxes pay for (educated workforce, stable and secure society, good infrastructure, etc), while avoiding paying their fair share for these services they're benefiting from. Note that a common counter to this is that this is perfectly legal and no one has any obligation to pay more taxes than they're legally obligated to pay (this is all true), but this idea starts to fall apart once one recognizes that these same companies also spend a significant amount of money lobbying for the very changes to the tax code that make their actions legal. Unfortunately most citizens don't have the political and monetary clout to essentially buy laws that benefit them.

I think I'll stop there before I start going on a bit of a rant myself (or is it already too late?).