Government Is A Bargain

Excerpt:

"Few consumers have noticed, but the federal government has essentially been on sale, with taxpayers paying about 20 percent less than they used to for what Washington does. Yet unlike satisfied customers, taxpayers are increasingly fed up with the government they finance. This could make them downright surly when the price of government goes back up, which is a near certainty over the next few years.

A new report published by the Congressional Budget Office shows that the average household paid 17.4 percent of its income to the federal government in the form of taxes in 2009, the latest data available.

That's the lowest tax burden on record. It's about 20 percent lower than the federal tax burden in 1979, when the CBO's data series began.

Government services, instead of falling in proportion to the amount of revenue Washington takes in, have instead expanded.

Over the last few years, in fact, taxpayers have been getting the best deal in modern times, in terms of what they get from the government, and what they pay for it.

The bigger point, however, is that the federal tax burden has been falling at every income level."