Do people in the EU want to see their tax money used for that purpose rather than other far more pressing needs such as healthcare? I really doubt it.

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Ylpertnodi an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not convinced the healthcare side of the EU stops working while other issues are being discussed, though I believe the cookie consent banner department NEVER sleeps.

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EA-3167 an hour ago | parent [-]

It doesn't stop working of course, but people who are already paying heroic percentages of their income to fund it are generally wary of new projects being added to the tab.

	▲	munk-a 14 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'm not certain if it's due to the special brand of American self-reliance or if it's due to a higher efficiency of tax spending but, while no one likes paying taxes, in most places people can see the effects of their taxes and end up spending less when that spending is collectively managed than if everyone tried to do it themselves. I don't know if you work in HR but if you compare Canada and US taxes Canadian taxes are clearly higher... but when you look at cost of hiring the multiplier companies pay to provide a given level of effective income to employees it is far lower in Canada. While the taxes we see are higher, the taxes the US invisibly foists on individuals end up adding up to a much larger number (as well as the US engaging extensively in employer-side taxation which "hides" the tax bill). It wouldn't hurt, either, to tone down the hyperbole.
	▲	lovich 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Do you have a source on EU residents paying a “heroic percentage” of their income? Everytime I’ve gotten actual numbers from people the total tax burden has been roughly equivalent between the US and the EU, but people confuse the different buckets it comes from as the EU has taxes like VAT and the US will be split between federal,state,local,property,sales, etc

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jmye an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

... How much tax money do you think it would actually take? I think this is a false choice.

(Not that I think it's a good suggestion, but this is a bad reason not to do it).

	▲	EA-3167 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think creating a social network to compete with the likes of FB is going to be a hard problem, especially with the insane network effects of existing social media. I won't pretend that the server farms will somehow be prohibitively expensive, but the marketing might be. Especially since it might not work. Right now everyone (unfortunately) is on existing networks and if you're a business that's what matters.