i can't believe it's generally cheaper for HE in the states than it is in the UK, WTF? Every university cost £8000 to £9000 a year here, although we have 30 years to pay it. 

I did read it. when you are going to compare how much tax is paid by a person, and what % of GDP is spent by the government and compare it to another nation its best to have the most accurate numbers or the comparison fails. We pay a large portion of our taxes to the state so it adds a lot more to what our overall government spends. If austraila is different (which i think it is) than your comparisons are wrong. Off the top of my head I am pretty schools are paid for by state and local funding, not federal. Our taxes also do not inlcude a national health care system. I think once you take that into account you will see we have a spending problem. We are spending a greater percentage of our GDP than ever before, and the government is currently collecting a larger percentage our or GDP in taxes, and there is no end in sight for the deficit.

I pay $0 dollars out of pocket and get $900 extra from the government and I go to a private university. Since I'm low income (bottom 5%) my private university gives me $45,000 in institutional grants for a $60,000 tuition. Then I get the federal pell grants, and state grants to cover about $7000 more. The rest is paid in loans. So I'll be in a lot of loan debt unfortunately, but even private universities are affordable for the poor here. My school is overall ranked #23 in the nation, by the way. If somebody remains poor in the United States, it IS because they're lazy. If somebody becomes poor in the United States from having a middle class status it's because the government has screwed them. That's why despite coming from a bottom 5% family I understand very well what government dependency does. 

That's just silly.  There is always room for more successful buisnesses and being around successful buisnesses make it MORE likely buisnesses will succeed because the area is better, more people have jobs etc.

Detroit didn't "focus" on an enconomy, they went with the only economy they had... after the rest of their companies went out of buisness or moved away.  So I hate to say it... but what you see as the solution to the problem was actually it's primary cause.

I rounded up to give a high estimate, but my schooling was ~£3,000/year and I consider it to have been a good education. I also already had a job before graduation.

Nobody actually said that the US should "adopt Australia's policies". What I said was that America should be looking at other countries, and finding out what works best, and then adapting that to the US's system as best they can.

Australia is just a good case study, because Australia and the US are very similar in many, many ways.

And by the way, America's greatest successes occurred when your income tax rates were highest, not lowest. Think about that for a little while.

That seems fair enough. 

As for the last sentence, can you provide examples? I would say the U.S reached its peak in development and inventions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when there was a concept of laissez-faire capitalism and Federal taxes were less than 5%. Afterwards, most of the inventions and discoveries came from foreigners who fled Europe during Nazi and Soviet occupations. I think the correlation is likely war with development moreso than spending/taxation (which also correlates with war) and development. 

nobody paid those tax rates that you're talking about.  The rich didn't pay more in taxes before despite the higher top rates.  

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324705104578151601554982808.html

"In 1958, the top 3% of taxpayers earned 14.7% of all adjusted gross income and paid 29.2% of all federal income taxes. In 2010, the top 3% earned 27.2% of adjusted gross income and their share of all federal taxes rose proportionally, to 51%."

Why do you think that Australia's state system would be dramatically different from America's state system?

Australia has the tax structure set up differently, but federal revenue and state revenue are essentially kept separate. Our payroll tax, for instance, is a state tax, not handled by the federal government. And State responsibilities include health and education, too - our public schools are referred to as "State Schools", because they're handled by the state, not the federal, government. We also have local governments, which are predominantly funded by what we call "rates" - local taxes that are levied against people living in the area governed.

And as I said, America has a problem of bad spending, not high spending. You should have a federal health system of some sort, and that system should get a reasonable amount of funding. That funding could easily be taken out of your extremely large defense budget, where the waste is perhaps worst of all.

By the way, you're spending a greater percentage of GDP than any recent time... and yet you're still only spending about on par with what Australia has been spending for quite a while. Australia comfortably survived the GFC, America went into recession. Think about that. Your claim is also false - the US spent far more as a percentage of GDP during WWII, and during WWI it was a little higher than it is now. Of course, during WWI, the top income tax rate was about 70%, and during WWII, it was over 80% and went as high as 94%. Your top tax rate now is just 35%. No wonder your public debt is growing so rapidly.

By the way, here's a plot of US top marginal tax rate vs GDP growth rate for 1929-1945:

Higher maximum marginal tax rate correlates with greater GDP growth, not less as those who are anti-tax would have you believe.

Of course, one thing to note is that a large chunk of US spending actually goes to paying off interest on your public debt. As such, you do need to temporarily restrain some spending, in order to start reducing the debt. As the debt shrinks, you should start to increase your spending to maintain your budget surplus at a fairly constant level. If you can get public debt down to about one tenth of its current levels, you should be in a strong position.

But reducing spending, even temporarily, isn't going to solve the problem. Tax rates need to go up, because if you cut spending too far, it will tank your economy even further. And don't fall into the trap of thinking less expenditure means less deficit. There's a heap of feedback systems within economies, which mean that cutting spending can cause a reduction in revenues. It's all a complicated balancing act, and the kind of reductionist arguments put forward by so many American politicians (on both sides) and so many closed-minded right-wing commentators and lobbyists is only further harming your country.

So again, I'll say it - America needs to look at other countries, and figure out what works, and what doesn't. Stop the damn oversimplified introspection and learn from the rest of us a little.