[Retric]

Richer society's can support higher standards of government spending. So IMO, the only metric that matters in Government spending is per person spending / per person GDP.

And in that context you see various growth and cuts over time.

However, even that is misleading as richer society's have a higher percentage of discretionary income and may be willing to pay higher tax rates.

[greedo]

Higher "standards" of spending? Is that the new liberal euphemism for higher taxes? Richer societies can spend more dollars, but percentage wise, there's obviously a limit. We'll find out in the next 20 or so years as the amount we spend on social services crowds out all other spending, and we can't pay back the principal on our existing debt.

[Retric]

Sorry, I mean if you keep the percentage of taxes the same you end up with more money. That often changes the perception of reasonable expenses. Police forces for example are often better equipped in wealthy areas. The high school football field may have better bleachers ect.

Nobody thinks it's important to add street lights in the middle of corn fields. But, cities have had various forms of lighting over time and increasing standards for lighting levels from the 1400's to now. US street lights for example could be perfectly useful for walking if they where 1/10 as bright as they currently are which would significantly reduce associated costs.

Historically, rates where vastly lower. But, people also got vastly fewer benefits from the government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_medieval_England So, YMMV.

PS: Anyway, if inflation adjusted medium income was say 10x as much I could see people tolerating 70% tax rates as their take home pay would still be significantly higher than we have. AKA if average person make 500,000$ in inflation adjusted dollars then they might be ok with an after tax take home pay of just 150,000$ / year on average. But say government provided self driving cars and underground tunnel networks.