[Retric]

Much of Europe has similar effective tax rates as the US. The difference is the US tax rate is taken out in a lot of separate taxes at the SS, Medicare, Income tax (federal) + State income tax, sales tax, property taxes + local sales taxes, property taxes. Plus Debt and a wide range of fines and fees. Where Europe has no EU wide taxes and it's all taken out at the 'state' and local level.

PS: Per person the US government spends as much on healthcare as many countries with 'national' healthcare so we are paying for it even if we don't have universal healthcare.

[zeroonetwothree]

I don't know what you consider "similar", but the US does have significantly lower effective tax rates (by 10-15%) than most of Europe: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/effective-...

[Retric]

That's simply ignoring state and local government spending. Ed: And possibly Medicare. It's also ignoring the 50% of company matching medicare which is paid by the self employed.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/numbers?units=p

PS: As a sanity check. Federal (24.33 GDP -3.72%GDP given to the sates) State spending is 8.97% of GDP, local 10.69%, which adds up to 40.27% GDP. Note: Actual revenue is only 32.61% GDP because we are just borrowing that much money but debt does get paid back one way or another. http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/year_revenue_2012USpn_13p...