Must not be thinking of the laffer curve then. Whatever it is i'm thinking of is basically what the above shows.

That is, no matter the tax rates... the revenues stay shockingly around the same level of GDP in the US.

Highway maitnence is CHEAP compared to highway building and a VERY small part of the budget.... and at this point... again, I point you to the data.

You can say the US is bad at spending but... that really doesn't change... anything... and it doesn't seem to explain why if anything there is more of a negative correlation then a positive one.

You can't have a government that spends a lot and spends mostly on infrastructures investments that imrpove the economy just because there aren't that many economy improveming government projects out there.

Granted even less so in a country like the US... but in general.  For example... based on how highway spending works.  Highways are rarely ever built anywhere useful anymore.

There is actually been a big push to "return to gravel" because of a lot of the disuse US roads have and cost maintaining things that aren't needed/wanted.  If anything, you could argue US roads are OVER built.

What you may of saw was the graph, of tax rate and GDP growth and saw that there was little connection between the two.  It wasn't what someone else had pointed out, but your own observation.

I believe a problem with have  now is that the law of diminishing returns have kicked in.  Even war efforts are taking up a smaller percentage of the GDP, so it isn't crowding out funding much .  There is little places people can go to get increases.  There is a bunch of need for fixing infrastructure so bridges do collapse, but that merely causes a short term sugar rush.  I would also argue the push for green is arguably a necessity, but you won't get a hugeh GDP gain from it, and isn't really going to cause gains in jobs either.  It shifts labor elsewhere.  If it leads to export increases,that is a different story for America.  I know near where I am, there is a Chinese company company in to build a solar panels components factory, and that should employ 1000+ people.  It is far more than what the government sponsored flop in the area did actually.  Who is likely to get employed?  Well, probably former people in the area who worked on assembly lines for IBM that IBM has not employed.  

Tax rate... I was what I meant there.

IE that no matter what the tax rate is.  Revenue stays shockingly similar.

As for your second point.

That's totally possible... and piggybanks on to my point earlier about why it was easy to grow during those earlier times with earlier tax rates.

It was an easier time to grow. Growing was easy.

It certainty is harder to grow now... and it's going to keep getting harder to grow.

Which is also why you need more incentives.

It's why Warren Buffet had to phrase the statement he did the way he did to get across the political point he wanted when he essentially said nobody was going to turn down a sure thing if the tax rate on capital gains was higher.

Nobody was going to turn down a sure thing... but so little in investments are a sure thing.

I would point to the fact that the overall regulatory structure of our government and economy was vastly different, and far more favorable back then, than it is today.

People always make the mistake of pointing to "Oh! But the tax rate was real high in the 50s and 60s, but the middle class was growing and everything was great! Lets raise taxes and promote unions!" without looking at the totality of the economic climate in years' past.

For example, there was no Clean Air or Clean Water act. The tax code had thousands less pages than it does today, and the labor force was significantly different than today. Those things correlated to the expansion of the economy. Indeed, the countries that are growing by leaps and bounds today are doing it through very weak regulations and arguably small government, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and so on.

That's a good point.  Only real outlier being China on the small government front.

Not the regulations front though!

I read an interseting article the other day that claims the reason global climate change has been completely undetectable for the last 15-20 years or so is because of the Chinese and there excessive use of coal leading to massive soot cloud cooling effects.

That's right up there with the fact that it's thought by climate historians that depopulation of the Native Americans led to Global cooling.  As there was a plague that killed off something as high as like 95% of the population sometime before the Pilgrims landed in North America... and despite there "Green" image... Native Americans deforested areas like crazy.

China is a small government when it comes to the size of their budget. The issue is that China puts a lot of its GDP into military and socially authoritarian programs (South Korea is similar in the military aspects, due to the DPRK)

1. Singapore - 17.0%
2. Taiwan - 18.5%
3. Hong Kong - 18.6%
4. China - 20.8%
5. South Korea - 30.8%
6. United States - 38.9%

As for the Native deforistation thing - I've read a few articles about it too. Its crazy stuff.. Supposedly, the Indians had a city near modern-day St. Louis that had 1 million people.

The rich aren't getting richer. Everyone else is just getting poorer

For me, there's no problem with that, as long as it's legal. Also, if it is beneficial for the employees,consumers and to the society. However, the yearly Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans found that the net worth of the super-rich has climbed in the last 12 months. The income gap continues to expand, as the middle class recedes.

The poor becoming poorer is a problem. Also, CEO pay has skyrocketed in the past 30 years while the average worker salary has barely gone up.