Everyone seems to forget the Eurozone Crisis from 2008-2014 and how government debt skyrocketed.
A lot of that debt was also at bad terms due to the high risk profile during that time period.
The only easy lever a lot of European countries had to service their budgets was taxes, because a lot of other levels were handed off to the ECB.
Ireland is very business and FDI friendly, has a fairly decent budget, and worked very hard to resolve it's debt problem in the 2010s.
Ireland now has a ratio similar to that of Germany's, and Ireland has a credit rating of AAA for years now while Portugal only recently made it to BAA in the past year.
Meanwhile I got a friend, married an American, moved there, was already making reasonable money here, just causually 4x his salary, is able to take vacations, heat his home, etc etc but yeah life not enjoyable in the USA
That will surely encourage young people to have their own children. They will pay even more!
60% is about how much you would pay in Germany on 100k EUR salary - 50% in income tax + social security + healthcare tax and then 19% VAT on most things you buy.
In my view it's just immoral to place this burden on young people.
Taxes are high in Europe because we fund older generations and have oversized wasteful public sector. It has nothing to do with education (very low % of overall budget), healthcare (you are funding it mainly for old people paying multiple of you fair share if you have any kind of decent job) or "social safety nets". I hope more countries push against that. Portugal has fantastic weather and landscapes, same for Greece. Attract enough productive people who are fed up with being diary cows for pensioners and bureaucrats who never worked an honest day in their lives but are very qualified to spend your money and things will start happening there.