U.S. Government shuts down.

[kandrathe]

"In 2013, Americans will pay $2.76 trillion in federal taxes and $1.45 trillion in state taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.22 trillion, or 29.4 percent of income."

Just shy of 30%. All included. Even according to anti-tax lobbyists.

...

The middle 20% pay about 25% of their income, all told. The poor pay less, the rich more. Nobody pays more than 50% - top marginal rates don't go anywhere near that, and the only way you'd get that is living in a high tax state, with no deductible income, a salary rather than capital gains, and to be very high income, such that you paid the 39.6% federal marginal tax rate on the vast majority of your income.

I re-read your previous post. We can agree on about 30% as a average. You need to factor in though, that the bottom quintile pay virtually zero except for consumption taxes. And... if you are truly poor, you're taxes returned is larger than your taxes paid. On the other end, there are a small minority of citizens (1%) that pay for 37% of the governments cost. The top 10% (those with incomes over $112,000) received 43% of all income and paid 71% of all federal income taxes. My issue with that is not that the top 10% pay taxes, or even that they pay relatively high taxes, it is that a mere $112,000 household income puts one in the top 10%. It shows that most "opportunities" are subsistence, or slightly better.

You're entitled to your opinion, but it does not match Danish reality. Denmark is an exceptionally free market, entrepreneurial economy, even for its highly competitive Northern European context.

Denmark ranks no. 9. The US is 10. And that's even considering a dismal "fiscal freedom" score, because this is the Heritage institute, and they think government is the devil.

Hong Kong is a city-state, with 100% of its territory being a highly urbanized financial supercenter attached to the world's largest manufacturing zone, whose miserable GDP/capita and repressive goverment policies are conveniently not measured in Hong Kong, because they all happen in China. If you could turn the Midwest into NYC, the US could all be Hong Kong. But you can't.

I'm sure there are many things wrong with Hong Kong, and NYC. I'm looking at the things they are doing right.

People buy all sorts of stupid crap, and the richer, the stupider.

I'm sure that sometimes they do. In balance, it is not.

Services provided (hours worked) over what population growth (recipients).

That makes no sense. Services provided is not the same as hours worked - that's the whole concept of productivity. If productivity can only increase by decreasing the population or increasing the number of hours worked, then no wonder you have such a pessimistic view - you've defined productivity gains out of existence.

I should clarify what I meant... Services provided, and hours worked to produce those services over what population growth (recipients).

Are we providing vastly more services than 30 years ago? Are we serving vastly more population than 30 years ago? If so, then it might justify the 500% rise in the cost of government.

1980 we spent $590.9 billion for 226,545,805 people, and in 2013 we spent about 3,803.4 billion for 315,091,138. The cost of government has increased by 543%, while the population has increased by 39%. Even accounting for some inflation, you'd think that we'd see some impact of technology on the productivity of government. And... Deebye has a point, the bulk of that is still spent on a few programs.