My personal income tax is about 35% on a salary that is much higher than average. For households it is noticeably lower especially if one takes into account direct payments for children. Even for cases when both parents have high salary the total tax will be around 50K USD per year.
Yes, VAT is 25%, but it is not particularly high by European standards. Poland is not known for high taxes, but VAT there is 23%.
Now consider the benefits. Given that University education is free and students can get loans from the state on very attractive terms to cover living expenses, after 6 years of studies one may accumulate a debt of 30-40K USD if one just studies with no income from any jobs.
I have no idea where the author took that 31 hour of working per weak. The standard number is 37.5 hours. True in some big companies like banks it is OK to submit time sheets with 127 hours per month, but this is rare. From my experience on engineering positions in SMB overtime is expected, just not all the time.
Most people work in SMBs, not government bureaucracies or government-owned companies or big businesses. Businesses are very competitive. Just consider that Opera browser, the QT library and Mali GPUs are developed in Norway. I personally consulted a company that won engineering contracts against Siemens in Germany and a company that we share the office with like 20 people just won a contract in France competing against big French companies.