alt Hacker News"since so much of it (and so much of its growth) is for the military"
So clearly you are pretty uninformed as the military spending is only 13% of the federal budget. Social Security (AKA a socialist program, IDK if anyone can deny that) is 22%, Medicare (another socialist program is 14.2%). Interest on our prior spending (a lot of it from SS and Medicare, etc, some military too. is 14%
So, if you add social programs you has (SS = 22.5%, Medicare = 14.2%, not counting education) that is 36% of the budget or nearly 3x miltitary spending.
A capitalist economy would NOT have those things are as they are not free market at all, they are the government forcing your to pay into them.
> you are pretty uninformed [...] SS and Medicare
This is another aspect where your thesis is not-fully-baked. If you want people to receive what you meant, you have to stop writing it wrong.
1. You spoke about "the federal tax rate" and claimed it was "0" in 1900.
2. The most charitable interpretation of that is that you meant to say income tax: That's usually what people mean when they're too-vague; It would literally be $0 before it was introduced in 1913; You can't have meant all taxes because those were absolutely >0 and you wouldn't make that kind of math mistake, right?
3. When critiquing the growth and dominance of the income tax, that excludes the separate taxes (payroll) that go to SS/Medicare.
> capitalist economy
I'm not taking a stand on the "what the US is" conclusion at this point. What I'm saying is that your argument--how you're getting there--is unsound (can't ignore state/local level) and unclear (which numbers from where).