It's worth noting that the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Australia, and almost every other western democracy finance very large chunks of their governmental expenditures via high consumption taxes. Most people agree that not only are they not hellholes with the poor and middle class starving on the streets, but they're actually nicer places to be poor than the US.
As I citizen of one of those, I can attest that this is true, but surely not for the reason that we have high consumption taxes. Those are actually regarded with uniform disdain.
It's for other reasons --like a proper welfare state, the hold of certain socialist ideals regarding wealth and redistribution, etc. Namely, we don't view being poor as a personal failure, and we don't try to "punish" the poor for being so. We understand that there are systemic reasons for poverty and try to correct or counter-balance some of those.