What's your point? That different places have different social arrangements and tax regimes?
“
Each month the employer pays a considerable amount on top of your salary into the social security fund. The employee also pays a proportion of his gross salary in social security contributions. This fund is then used to pay social security:
allowances in the event of sickness
unemployment benefits
allowances in the event of incapacity for work through sickness or invalidity
allowances in the event of accidents at work
allowances in the event of industrial disease
family allowances
pensions
And what about healthcare? “Healthcare in Belgium is composed of three parts. Firstly there is a primarily publicly funded healthcare and social security service run by the federal government, which organises and regulates healthcare; independent private/public practitioners, university/semi-private hospitals and care institutions. There are a few (commercially run for-profit) private hospitals.”
I imagine this is all very different to how things are in California. So why are you comparing them?
Regarding VAT, at least where I'm from VAT is not levied on essential goods afaik. Secondly, some proponents of VAT claim it is a "fairer" tax than say income tax. One of Andrew Yang's ideas to fund UBI was to bring VAT to the USA (I am aware that VAT does exist to some extents in the States.)