The tax rate is lower, but the places charging those taxes do generally use them for providing public services that individuals would be paying for directly or

The tax rate is lower, but the places charging those taxes do generally use them for providing public services that individuals would be paying for directly or indirectly, so that likely offsets part of it. Past there, I'd suspect that it comes down to society as a whole having a more positive outcome, while individuals potentially having slightly worse outcomes. If we lower everyone's income in taxes but reinvest that money in healthcare and mental health services, quality education, etc, then we lift a lot of unproductive members of society up and have them all producing for us as well. The middle class may earn slightly less, but we can basically chop the lower classes/poverty stricken individuals right out of the equation - Sweden has 1% of the population below the poverty line, while the US has 15% - that's going to skew the average upward quite a bit.