American Exceptionalism Re-Revisited: OECD Taxes/GDP Since 1965

Steve:

I assume this mostly revenue from taxes? which if so, may illustrate another talking point.

Excellent news! The US tax collection is on par with Switzerland (and Australia), by no means a slouch in services provided by the government…so the point shows that the US has a spending priority problem. No need for more taxes, just more efficient spending.

K

here is the full release and tables of the monthly income and outlays report from the BEA: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/2015/pdf/pi0215.pdf

but dont read the text, it will just confuse you…all the dollar amounts are at an annual rate but the percentages that refer to them are month over month changes…i got them to add a footnote, but it’s still nearly inscrutable…

March 2015 Policy Brief from Peterson and J F Kirkegaard is broader in scope and shows a treatment of the tax-expenditure policies.

But also note that the US population is continuing to rise and a per capita view of revenues would be informative and make the US revenue system even less robust than shown here.

SO, the US revenue system makes the US the champion in a competition on the basis of inter-jurisdictional tax competition. Kirkegaard’s paper indicates similar social spending, though tax-expenditures are less efficient and favor those of means in the US, while the revenue systems collect 13% less than these other countries.

I’ve studied this for quite some time, it seems obvious to me that the US could increase the collections obtained from its revenue systems many percentage points and the US would still be the place in which a rich person would want to live (in order to avoid contributing as much to the financing of govt, that is).

Beverly, would not totally disagree… I would argue that military spending should even be LOWER than theirs.

K