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Given the prevalence of the “all taxes are bad” narrative that’s effectively cut taxes over the past couple of decades I’m not surprised. The money has to come from somewhere, so if the honest way of getting money is blocked the dishonest ones have to be used.

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That pre-supposes that the problem is money - state and local revenues have been growing at 6%+ CAGR since the 1970’s, well in excess of inflation. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/state-general-rev...

But what does that look like on a per-capita basis?

Well population growth over that period was ~1% and inflation was ~3.7% so still ~1.3% real increase in spending a year...

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