It's a difficult tradeoff. By taxing more and more it's easy to send the economy into the death spiral so to grow the revenue without killing the economy you need economic growth. Cutting taxes will not give the growth aromatically but carefully designed tax system with low taxes where it helps should be a part of the strategy.

In practice though tax cuts usually make rich richer without helping the economy to grow (because of lobbying/corruption).

> The problem is that half the political system thinks you can cut taxes and grow revenues.

And the other half thinks you can pay for a European-style welfare state without European-style middle class taxes. Americans are Disney adults.

Right they (the politicians) don't actually think that, they just say that to get cooked projections. Once those revenue projections turn out to be false, it doesn't matter because they already have their tax cuts baked in. Then everyone can blame the other side for deficits and campaign on fixing it. Rinse and repeat.

The problem is not that we aren’t taxed enough— it’s that our government lights cash on fire

Here is some absurd garbage your US taxes paid for:

•$1.5 Million studying the effects of yoga on goats

•$1.7 billion maintaining empty buildings

•$5 million on a campaign to promote an alternative music scene to get hipsters to stop smoking

•$2 million to create an internship program that resulted in the hiring of one full-time employee at the Department of agriculture

•In 2021 alone, the government managed to misplace $281 billion in payments

•$1 million studying the effects of music on dairy cows

•$1.7 million to study the effects of alcohol on fish