system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How can countries like Germany afford to make a college education free while some universities in the US charge $50k+ a year for tuition?
gpt
Most EU countries have a higher tax rate than the US, combined with significantly lower military spending and smaller populations than the US.

In 2011, Germany had a tax revenue of $1.551 trillion.  In that same year, the US had a tax revenue of $4.218 trillion

The US had a population of 311.6 million.  Germany had a population of 81.8 million.

Then, on top of that, of their $4.218 trillion the US spent $693.485 billion on military.  Germany spent $48.8 billion.

So the US only had 2.71x more tax revenue despite having 3.8x more people - and then the US spent 14.2x more on their military than Germany.

(All values listed in USD$ and sourced from Wikipedia, so take it for what it's worth)