"I'm still only going to give you a small portion of my income. 0.1% should suffice."
And in the system I advocate, you could say that, while in the system you defend, you cannot. Or you can, but it wont fly, of course. Find a way to refuse (difficult in europe, where the money is nearly always taxed before you get it) and you will eventually see why we say the power of the state grows out of the barrel of the gun.
"Surprisingly I hear from some US citizens that this wouldn't work, which doesn't make sense since most of Europe is proof that it does."
Of course in part that's because Americans tend to be pretty provincial and may not realise the degree to which it does work. But it wont work, not long term. It has worked for a few decades in western Europe on the back of a number of (ultimately unsustainable) distortions, and the system is straining and cracking badly in a number of cases already.
One paradox you face is that while a relatively wealthy nation with a culture that values work and production can maintain a welfare state and pay for it with taxes without destroying your productivity overnight, you still sap the very qualities that make this possible in the longer term. Which is to say, over time doing this makes you a less wealthy nation with a culture that places less value on productive work.
Another is that the spending has been effectively subsidised by the US. It's much easier to find the money for health care if you can simply count on someone else to defend you and skimp on defence. But it might be a big mistake to expect that situation to last forever.
I will give you examples from the country I am most familiar with - Sweden. At the end of WWII Sweden was in an enviable position. Neutrality had preserved Swedish industry, and Swedish companies cleaned up rebuilding the rest of Europe. The social democrats built their ideal welfare state with that wealth, and look what's happened. Sure, it worked to a degree, but as time passed it became more and more untenable. Eventually 'right wing' governments came in and cut costs and rationalised it into quite possibly the best designed welfare state in the world, but it's still sinking. And the areas where it functions best, such as education, have actually morphed from social democrat to nearly libertarian forms in practice.