[guelo]

This is factually wrong. Many of the richest economies in the world have much higher taxes than the US. Some data,

  Denmark 50% of GDP taxed, $56,115 GDP per capita
  Sweden 49.7%, $43,986
  Belgium 46.8%, $43,533
  France 46.1%, 42,747
  Norway 43.6, $79,085
  Netherlands 39.5, $48,222
  US 28.2%, $46,381

Sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nom...

PS. I wish I had some statistics chops to see if there's any correlation between these two lists of tax rates and gdp per capita. My hypotheses is that there's not.