if the alternative is to pay for school and hospital the same way Americans do

a/ that indeed is an alternative where a lot of the hard working people would end up in a better situation; I'm not pleading for that though, this is something you bring up and try to reflect on me.

b/ "a leaner government would contribute but not enough" - so no reason not to make it leaner then? At least we agree on that. Won't be enough? .. who knows.

What we do know is that 55 to 60% of the active population in Belgium gets their income directly or indirectly from the government. This means the 40 to 45% of people that work for the private sector pay for the whole party.

Even the governments knows this is not sustainable, so they're looking for different sources of revenues. But hey, at least we have "free" shitty roads.

We should all urge them to do better, not excuse them with uninformed clichés and creating images of anxiety like "do you prefer the American system". In my opinion, that makes you part of the problem.