Americans have been so indoctrinated into hating socialism that even something like social programs which aren't really socialist are easily dismissed. Unfortunately, without much pushback they've been able to rollback so many social services to the point that I don't even know how it'd be possible to reverse that trend.

I can tell you that even though my paygrade would be 27,5% my effective rate is told to be like 18%, but with all the discounts on my paycheck I leave like 40% of my money with the government, and the company also gives an additional 30-40% equivalent of what I earn to the government as well.

For you to have an idea of workers wage versus government gain in Brazil.

For you to pay an employee with minimum wage plus basic benefits (health insurance, transportation and food), the employee end up costing like twice (because of social security, taxes and some other conundrums). Sure when you increase the wage of the employee the amount the company pay to the government in percentual decreases but that is substituted by the what the employee ends up paying for the government.

That is of course only looking at the taxes on the paycheck.

So when you look at the whole tax burden in Brazil they say it is about 40%, but I feel it is over 50%. Like we pay annual tax for keeping a car and an additional tax to use the car (plus high cost of insurance, parking and tool), we pay annual tax for having a house (besides tax to transfer, tax to register and income tax if you have any face value gain on a sale, let's say you bought for 100k and sold for 120k you pay tax on the 20k even if that was just inflation). It is just a very big snowball. And that is ignoring that most services and products have hefty taxes on them (usually over 30%).

example:

Because Americans are individualistic and already hate taxes, nobody wants an extra 30%-50% of their paycheck to go into the pockets of the government (in comes freedom of choice). Though I do think we should have a more robust"safety net" healthcare system for those who can't afford, but the issue is the US is massive and costs vary state by state (just like minimum wage does) so it would be in the hands of the state government. European countries have the advantage that they're small in comparison to the US that they have a more collectivist mentality and the benefit that the cost of living/wages are more balanced than in the US too.

They hate it because they are made to hate it, its part of the propaganda they recieve on a daily basis. However, I believe most americans do no have an actual understanding of what socialism is or the fact that they have implemented several socialist practices to their society already and they do not realize it or take them for granted, such as public transportation, social security, medicare, public libraries, guaranteed public education, and several other public institutions. So while you can argue that a Social State is a terrible/good idea for whatever ideals you have, several of its most basic principles are already functional in modern society.

Europe has been in decadence for decades soon you will become China’s puppet, you can keep your failed system And mother merkel to yourself.

Yes, some certainly are. Some everyday Americans fear it, but the wealthy and politicians are very afraid of it.
Americans are brainwashed to believe having a few socialistic tendencies added to our economy would make our nation full-on socialist or even communist. They fail to realize that many developed nations in the world are social democracies (or at the very least closer to that than America is).
More than half of Americans support Medicare for All, Tuition-Free College, Higher Minimum Wage, Taxing the Rich higher but when you say that those have slight socialist tendencies they freak out. It's not the ideas that are unpopular, it's the association with socialism. I'm a social democrat who wants America to become a social democracy. It may happen in my lifetime, but it's gonna be a heck of a struggle.

Ka-pi96 said: Socialism? Don't you mean common sense?

Government Gooooooooood! 🧟

Older generations do for sure. They got told all the time that socialism is bad, anything resembling anything from socialism is bad, and that the state and everything it does is bad (unless it's military, then it's supposed to be the best thing ever) but to such ridiculous degree that it's been equalized to the devil or even worse stuff. This meant things like government programs like healthcare which have no authoritarian (police and intelligence, like the FBI, CIA, NSA) or propagandist (NASA during the space race) got cut down, most notably healthcare and unemployment support. Mandated Vaccines also were considered a form of government control and the beginning of the Anti-Vaxxer movement. Unions also got almost destroyed and outlawed as fighting for worker's rights was considered something like a soviet ploy to take over the country. Seriously, just have a look at the caricatures under McCarthyism and judge by yourself.

Millenials and Z however grew up at a time where the Soviet union was dissolved and with it, the "great threat" that always got pointed at the people when they wanted to point at bad things for socialism or even just social programs disappeared with it. Instead, they got screwed over by capitalism, thrice by now, in just a dozen years. First by the financial crisis which made it very difficult for the Millenials who were coming of age at the time to get a job, then by 10 years of wage stagnation despite employment reaching new lows at the end, followed by Covid-19 and it's effects on both the economy and health, plus showing exactly why tying healthcare to your employer is such a bad idea and why the total lack of regulation in terms of healthcare just a tinderbox was that was waiting to explode.

Long story short, almost all Boomers/Silent in the US do, most of the X-ers do, but Millenials and Z, which had been screwed over by capitalism, increasingly trend to the contrary.

If Europe has a failed system, then what would the one in the US be? A total catastrophe and train wreck or what?

Well it might have economic benefits over being america's puppet.

You are right any form of government can burn the forest down to clear land for farmers (which soil will be worthless to farm in only a few years), allow timber companies to have free range and boot natives out of their land.  It's just only accelerated at an exponential pace under the current regime.  Brazil was military ruled for a long time.  Maybe you guys should go back to it because your country is corrupt regardless who is in power.