Today's government spending levels are indeed too high, at least relative to the average level of tax revenue the government has generated over the past 60 years. Unless Americans are willing to radically increase the amount of taxes they pay relative to GDP, government spending must be cut.
Today's income tax rates are strikingly low relative to the rates of the past century, especially for rich people. For most of the century, including some boom times, top-bracket income tax rates were much higher than they are today.
Contrary to what Republicans would have you believe, super-high tax rates on rich people do not appear to hurt the economy or make people lazy: During the 1950s and early 1960s, the top bracket income tax rate was over 90%--and the economy, middle-class, and stock market boomed.
Most people also forget that much of our debt came because we were increasing security throughout the country (post 9/11) increasing defense spending AND we cut taxes during that time. This is the only war in which we didn't even try to pay for it. During WWII our upper tax rate was 88-94%, during Korea it was 92% and even with Kennedy's tax cuts during the 60s, it was still in the 70% range. It was during that time we also reached for the moon and started Medicare. Under Reagan it was 50% until the end of his term when it went down to 28%. Then George H Bush raised it to 31% and he got booted out of office. We also went into a mini recession during the early 90s and by the late 90s we came out of it and Clinton raised the taxes to 39% and we actually balanced the budget... something everyone wants to see happen.
It’s pretty silly to argue that letting the Bush tax cuts expire and have the top marginal rate rise from 35 percent to 38.6 percent is some sort of unprecedented assault on the rich. All Republicans look at President Reagan as a model of how they should governn, but there’s no serious talk of going back up to even the 50 percent rates of the early Reagan years.
Super-low tax rates on rich people also appear to be correlated with unsustainable sugar highs in the economy--brief, enjoyable booms followed by protracted busts. They also appear to be correlated with very high inequality. (For example, see the 1920s and now). Its all well and good if rich people aka "Job Creators" keep their money, but if they don't have people to sell the good to, they won't increase production and won't increase jobs. There has to be demand before their is supply. Periods of very low tax rates have been followed by periods with very high tax rates, and vice versa. So history suggests that tax rates will soon start going up.
People are constantly listening to twitter, talk radio and screaming people prostesting in the street. Where are the grown ups who actually study history and understand economics? All we ever hear now a days are people with an agenda... and that agenda isn't about solving the problem, its about making the other side look bad (both sides do this) just so they can stay in power.
I do not claim to understand economic theory, but neither do the vast majority of people who comment on these events. Now with the internet, twitter and 24 hour news, we all pretend to be and scream at each other and no one listens. I know this is long and if you read this far, you are probably interested in more than sound bites and are part of the solution. Too many loud mouths are part of the problem because they don't try to understand it just repeat what they hear.
In a democracy, we get the government we deserve and too many people are short sighted and are only worrying about what will happen tomorrow and not 10 years from now. We all have to chip in to solve this problem... the rich have to give more, the poor have to expect less, the retirement age MUST go up and we can't pretend to solve every problem in the world with our military. Mostly, we have to come together as citizens and suport our government when they make tough decisions. It is either make choices now or be forced into decisions later.