Ka-pi96 said:
Jon-Erich said:
Except you guys pay a lot more in taxes, so your education isn't exactly free. Also, how come Europe or Canada doesn't have their Silicon Valley or Hollywood? They have film studios and tech companies, but not like the US. Is it because it is far easier to be an entrepreneur in America because of the lower taxes and fewer regulations or are there other reasons? We got Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Facebook, Twitter and a lot more. We've got most of the major film studios and most of the major music labels. Then when you look at the music industry, the NFL and NBA, you realize that the US has more wealthy black people than any other nation on Earth? In fact, I remember reading somewhere that if you added up all the wealth of the entire black population of the United States, you would have the 14th largest economy in the world. Why is this? What is it that we were able to get right that you guys weren't?
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Do we pay more in taxes though? Here in the UK at least we get the first £11,850 (~$15k) with 0% income tax. Can you say the same in the US? Perhaps our higher earners pay more, but our poorer people, most likely not.
As for film studios/tech companies the main reason for that is probably population. Especially the case with film companies since those will be country specific in Europe due to different languages in each country so there's no chance of having one main place to make films for the whole of Europe unlike in the US.
As for black people, 13.4% of the US population is black(https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217), compared to only 3% in France (https://www.economist.com/europe/2009/03/26/to-count-or-not-to-count) and the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_the_United_Kingdom#Population_by_ethnicity). With all other European countries likely having less than those two.
So yeah, with a lot more black people in the country you should expect to have a lot more rich black people as well.
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In the US, the average American pays roughly 14% in taxes, though the bracket can range anywhere from 10% to almost 40%. A lot of it depends of what state you're living in. The poor are not taxed a lot simply they do not make enough to be taxed.
As for entertainment and tech, population has little to do with it. In entertainment for example, look at how many actors and comedians are from Canada. There are a lot of them. Why can't they make it in Canada? They have to come to the US. In fact, there are a lot of foreign entertainers who either work or live in the US. They're not going to Europe or Canada. There's very little there. It's the same thing in the tech field. A lot of the startups happen in the United States, but a lot of the talent comes from places like India. They're not coming to Europe or Canada. They're coming to the US. Even if you wanted to take population figures into account, lets look at Japan. The US has roughly 2 1/2 times the population that the Japanese have and yet the Japanese have their own success in tech and entertainment, much greater than Europe and Canada. At one time, they had the second largest economy in the world. I think they're #3 now.
When looking at the success rate for blacks in the US, if we wanted to go strictly by population, then arguably, there should be fewer successful blacks. In reality, they're over represented in sports. They pretty own an entire music genre that was invented by them in the US. We even had a black president. Also, if you want tp go back further into history, the first female millionaire in American history was a black woman who had been a slave just a few decades before becoming rich. In fact, there are quite a few success stories of ex-slaves who couldn't read or write but ended up owning successful businesses.
With all this being taken into account, there is something about the United States wether it is within the culture of the people or the freedom they enjoy that allows success to occur, especially from unlikely people in unlikely places. Out of the developed nations in the world, it is Japan and the United States that exports most of the culture and tech. Most of this tech and culture came from people were not rich before they found success.