[rayiner]

In Europe they largely don’t try to square the circle, aside from maybe exempting necessities like food. They offer efficient, high quality welfare services to low income people in return for those taxes. (Of course, low income people get much more in services than they pay in VAT.)

[patentatt]

But they do, in a way, by using those increased revenues to fund a comprehensive social safety net. If you just add VAT in the US, yeah it would be a disaster.