Americans are suckers.

Aren't the happiest people in the world located in Scandinavian countries? I'll take high taxes.

be interesting to see how the taxes are distributed. Are they progressive?

As I understand many of them get a lot of revenue from a VAT and that does not seem very progressive.

Interestingly enough, the recent ATRA tax cuts - making most of the Bush tax cuts permanent, are about 3% of GDP.

According to the Eurostat report, VAT represented another 15% to 20% of total tax revenue. The VAT is regressive (as is our FICA though it is based on income while the VAT is based on expenditures). I suppose you could make the case that a regressive tax like our FICA or their VAT creates a sense of ownership in the safety net that they fund (creating "third rails" that politicians are afraid to touch).

With 50%+ coming from progressive income taxes and 15-20% coming from regressive VAT it would seem to be on balance a progressive funding system. It could be better, though, and the EU Commission is making an effort to shift the source of taxes away from labor to environmental, property and capital taxes.

('transfers' being benefits, both actual money and spending on things like education and health). You can compare the Gini indices for OECD countries before and after taxes and transfers here: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=IDD

You get, for instance - Gini before taxes & transfers, and then after, for 2010 (or 2009 for Japan - most recent year listed):
USA 0.499 0.380
UK 0.523 0.341
Germany 0.492 0.286
France 0.505 0.303
Japan 0.488 0.336

So the pre-tax income distribution in the USA is comparable to many other developed countries, and more equal than the UK; but taxes and transfers make a big difference in evening things up in Germany, pretty big in France, then the UK, then Japan, and then the USA.

In the USA, I would like to see a moderate cut for lower and middle class taxpayers, coupled by a large increase in the income tax on the wealthy. Also removal of the FICA cap at $110k.

Stay away from a VAT.

system. The net effect of their high taxes and effective safety net is an equitable distribution of income.

Could parts of the total picture be better? Sure. The article even indicates that the EU is pushing countries push more of the tax burden to environmental, property and asset taxation away from the VAT.