Oh! The one that found success with the Laffer Curve. Right.
Freedom isn't an idea. It's an actual place. In terms of kingdoms a free peoples kingdom is a Freedom; and you don't have to pay someone for the right to exist.
Oddly enough we agree, there is a faction in the US pursuing its own agenda.
Hard to measure both over long and short timescales, since so many factors affect the willingness of people to invest personal effort and risk toward earning.
You might have more success looking at the amounts while attempting to control for more factors; but of course, you could make it worse, because statistics is hard!
This faction of the US is unique, which is why the US has some of the lowest tax rates in the world and in consequences has one of the most positive balances in net immigration, specially considering it has one of the harshest immigration policies in the world.
The US has some of the lowest tax rates in the world, IFF you are making a large amount of money.
If you are earning a median wage a lot of other countries have comparable tax rates. If you are earning minimum wage a lot of other countries have lower tax rates.
Yup, not a great country to be poor. Also tax-pressure is still considerable (33% of GDP). This implies the US has lots of regressive expenditures and taxes.
On the whole, I think the tax rate is the main difference between the US and most of industrialized countries, and net immigration is hugely positive for the US.
The U.S. is by any good measure somewhere between #1 and #3 in median individual income net of taxes and other mandatory transfers; and always #1 in the mean.
I think a lot of people look at the gap between the mean and median, and think that something must be going wrong; but to me, the inequality of outcome this measures is more a sign that America is a welcome home of extremely productive people and the smarter of their direct offspring, who inevitably earn ridiculous sums of money when and where doing so is not itself reviled.