Comments by "Science in Engineering" (@matsv201) on "American Reacts to Teaching in the USA vs The Rest of the World.." video.

  1. I think this video is a bit unfair. They set up Finland to be sort of a random European example. But that is not quite true. Looking at Pisa ranking Finland ranks nr 2 in Europe in both reading and Science and , while yes, ranking 8:th in Math. Still the result in math is not quite fair because most of the other countries does load of exclusion, and taking that into account, Finland is probobly nr 2. or at least top 5 there to. What is the nr European country. Estonia... Nr 1 in all three categories (in Europe). Estonia is basically a mini Finland 4:25 this is a incredibly unfair way to compare. Because collage degree jobs earn MUCH more in the US than in Europe, where its virtually no diffrance , this make it look like the teacher earn less in USA; while they actually earn quite a bit more. Now there is a problem with the Pisa test. It only test really the worse students... sort of. If you are good student or a medium to average student, you might score full point on pisa test. Its really the bottom 20% that determine a countries total score. There is nothing wrong with that... if we are honest in how we use the statistics. What the statistics show is really the percentage of children left behind. Not how good the top preforming students is. And if you want a good country for the future, you also want good top preforming students, not only good bottom preforming students
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  2. They really massage those numbers to fit there narrative. Checking OECD stats, Teachers (primary) in the US makes 63.5k/year while primary teachers in Finland makes 45,7k, and that is 2020 year number so that is pre inflation number. Also have to consider that a teacher in Finland pay a bit more tax (while the diffrance is not as large as in Sweden or Denmark, where teacher pay loads more in tax). I also checked out the cost of studding a few month back. I checked a average US state compare to the average cost of studying in Sweden. And while studying in Sweden officially is free, its don´t work that way in reality. You still need money, and you still get a loan. And i did that for nurses, because i did that for a other reason. So i just checked up a standard lone in Sweden at a collage and compared that to the median US state collage cost. And a Nurse in the US need 7 month of full time net work to pay back there (original) debt while in Sweden its was 9 month. While debt in dollar and cent was considerably lower in Sweden, the higher pay and lower taxes in the US made up the whole diffrance. I don´t know if the primary school education is the same in Sweden as in the US, but in that case it should be fairly similar to a nursing education. A Swedish primary school teacher makes (according to OECD) 49k and in USA 63,5k. The Swedish teacher will pay about 35% tax and the US teacher will pay probobly around 12%, making the net pay 32 and 56 giving the US teacher just under 9 month of net student loan payback (median state) and about 10.5 month in Sweden. So the diffrance is lower for teachers and nurses, but the teachers still earn it back faster. I would also say that large cities in Sweden is really driving up the average pay. Where i live nobody makes 49k how is a teacher. Not even at highschool. That is big city pay
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  3.  @dnocturn84  Not the diffrance between income tax and total tax pressure. I checked up specific tax level for a specific state with a median pay. VAT, employ-tax, nation income tax and other point taxes are exuded in the Swedish number. What i did was get a median pay then check out the state that had the same median pay as the nation then took the tax bracket from that state. Of cause if you live in California or NYC you will have much higher tax, but also higher pay. Same thing in Sweden. The 32.27 is not a real value. The actually value differs from region to region. 32.27 is really in the very low end, i guess they just took the Stockholm number and run with it. And that is only the base tax, not the nation tax. The comparison is actually Apple for Apple... Well sort of. Of cause there are other differences. Cost for healthcare is of cause lower in Sweden (but its not zero like a lot of Americans seam to believe). On the other hand cost of transport is a lot higher in Sweden. For a car you might pay €2000/year in taxes (i only pay €1000/year for mine, but its quite old) and fuel is today about equivalent to $10/gallon. And there are other things that are expensive to. And generally drives to work are very long. If you have a short drive you are really lucky. Its easy to say that you pay much more for healthcare in the US, and that is absolutely right, but we pay more for other stuff in Sweden. Its also a bit more complicated. While normal healthcare is subsidized by the region, what is considered special healthcare is not, like dental. In Sweden dental is payed in full by the patient. To be clear. 35% is just the normal income tax. Total tax pressure is MUCH higher. That is 40% employ tax, 25% VAT, 20% nation tax (its called state tax in Swedish, but its really a tax to the nation), then there is 40% point tax on stuff like gas or electricity. And to be clear, those taxes are multiplicative, not additive. And some taxes like employ tax is subtracted. (so the effective multiplicative value is about 30%). Nation tax works similar to how state tax work in the US. If you earn little you pay little or none. If you earn a lot you pay it in full. So while the rate is 20%, you may pay 0% out of the 20%. Same as state tax in some US states. A teacher right out of collage would typically pay 0% nation tax. Now it was a while back i did the original calculation i don´t remember what representative state i used, but it was some midwestern state, and the actual total bracket tax was 12% there for the median out of collage pay. And VAT and other stuff was not included. You don´t pay VAT on loans anyway. Neither in USA or Sweden. Including VAT in the both nation would not benefit Sweden. Median rate in the US is 7%, in Sweden 25%. That is quite a sharp diffrance.
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  4.  @dnocturn84  I did use real numbers. But i used numbers for Midwestern state ... i actually used the median state numbers and looked what state was median and just used that. Real numbers. Even if you don´t like it. Cost of studying in the US is really not that high. You don´t have to go to a Ivy league school. The diffrance is that in the US you can take out debt that is waaay higher than the money you actually need. It was that way in Sweden 30-40 years ago also. But today. What you can take out, is really what you need to survive. That is the diffrance. If you take out say half loan in Sweden, you are not paying your rent even with that. And for some education the budget don´t even work out. If you have extra educational cost, or an education in a very high rent area. You are not making it on student grant/loans alone. Still on a normal nursing or teacher education, that is not a problem.
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