This is an accounting trick. Taxes do not cover the same services everywhere. Of course, taxes are higher in Sweden than in the US, but then you don’t pay as much for your children’s education or your parents’ health care. So sure, the young and healthy people without children are better off in the US. Or the very wealthy who would nominally pay more taxes, though they have other tricks to use.

On average it’s much more nuanced, though. Comparing at one given level of service, public services are actually good value for money.

It's about mentality. Americans strive to attain the ideal of a "self-made man"; prizing work ethic and self-sufficiency. Germans (Europeans is too broad of a label) are okay with learning a trade and then doing their job consistently for the rest of their lives - that's why the employment conditions in Germany are tuned towards long-term, stable employment.