Ah, you were not talking about income tax alone. Fair enough.

Well, "this BS" is an insignificant part of what those taxes cover. Germany pays about 1/3 of the EU budget, so its share of these 10 Billion is less than a tenth of this year's federal coronavirus relief budget.

The specific number of 42% sounds like you're talking about taxes, but it's the second-to-maximum marginal tax rate, not the effective tax rate (which is below 30% for the vast majority of people). If you include social contributions, you can go above 50% - but those are things which benefit yourself quite directly, most notably health insurance. Which gives you the benefit of not being one medical emergency away from bankruptcy as so many people are in the USA.

No, you don't, not unless your income is about half a million EUR.

42% is the marginal tax rate (and 45% above 250k). The effective tax rate only exceeds 30% above ca. 71k EUR.