Speaking from US perspective, our tax code is a few thousand pages. I don't think it's meant for most people to understand.

That said, yeah the effective tax rate being a larger percent of one's income than the income from a second job is probably something that would be understood by most if stated differently.

Edit: i read some further responses and realized it's a different situation than a simple effective tax rate issue. I also didn't really understand the foreign and domestic tax issues at hand and resulting tax penalties though, so I'm in the ridiculous group.