Quote:I found another source which shows $333.33644 billion US for 2005. Which is still 1/9 the US budget.
Got a link? Every number I've seen for German government revenue has been in at least the ballpark of 480 billion Euros, which, depending on the exchange rate, is somewhere between 600 and 800 billion US.
If Wikipedia is to be believed on the issue, even my numbers are low: revenue was 1.277 trillion US in 2006. (Of course, revenue is not all taxed, but I don't think the German government has a revenue stream that exceeds taxation, so it can't realistically be more than double the tax revenue number.)
How about here for a comparative look at taxes vs. GDP? It seems to indicate what I've read everywhere else, that the US is pretty much has the lowest tax-to-GDP ratio of any developed nation, which is in complete contradiction to the argument you're making about Germany, whose ratio is almost 10% of GDP higher.
-Jester