The reason the US is a comparably "low tax" country is because we're borrowing the difference.
What worries me the most is that this is at a high point in our economic cycle, when tax collection is arguably the highest. The deficit and debt will expand significantly in the next recession.
I.e. have a Fed-like entity that gives Congress a max in spending for the current tax policy, and Congress is required by law to stay below that number
Fixing US debt has always been politically unpopular, and it always will be.
Technocrat bodies seem to do okay with setting scientifically-supported, non-specific directions, that can then be decomposed into specific directions by people better connected to constituents.
Such a body presumably would also realize that deficit spending on an average non-crisis Tuesday should be much more tightly reigned in.
I chose the Fed as an example because, whether they're correct or not, they absolutely pivot around exceptions.
Trump has declared crisis events no less than 20 times to justify his insane policy decisions.
We're just playing pretend games now.
The lower the ratio sinks, the less weight informed voters have, and the less intelligent the outcome gets.
The modern party duopoly exacerbated the issue (parties mobilize uninformed voters and often actively work against informing them), but voter enfranchisement also seriously impacted.
Universal suffrage is amazing from a human rights and ensuring everyone has political power standpoint, but troublesome when you have poor levels of universal education and ability for voters to inform themselves.
In modern times, with modern populations (US or larger), it feels like indirect democracy might be a better answer.
Allow voters to directly elect non-partisan voting representatives (many, so elections are hyper-local and candidates individually canvas), then pay those representatives a stipend for a few months (like jury duty) which they spend educating themselves on issues. Then have those representatives vote.
At the end of the day, when all the BS gets boiled away and we are left with raw/brutal reality. -- Any group of people attempting to govern themselves will end up with the government their collective will and (i'll use the loaded term) virtue deserves. The only caveat is time.
Unfortunately the U.S. constitution was written with the, in hindsight, naive assumption that political parties could be avoided.
This just led to a system that has political parties but doesn’t really acknowledge their existence and therefore makes it difficult to regulate their behavior.
These are the W2 workhorses who receive also no explicit current benefits from the gov (bar national security). They already pay taxes to the tune of 30-40% for zero benefits.
It will be hard to tell these folks that they need to pay 60–80% taxes on their W2.