Overtaxed?

Taxes are the revenue that the government uses to cover the expenditures that the duly elected representatives of the people (this is a representative democracy, after all) have decided to spend on the "common space" of the condo building that is our Republic.

If I were a member of the condo board (US government) I would say that condo fees -- er, taxes -- were too low if we were running a chronic deficit. We started running a chronic deficit as soon as Reagan became President of the condo board (I tried to warn the residents); his successor on the board, George HW Bush,  just continued to increase the deficit. The condo residents didn't think that anything was wrong during this period because the board went into hock borrowing money in order to keep the condo common areas looking like they did when the responsible Presidents (the one's before Reagan) were in office.

The next President, Clinton, raised condo fees (despite vigorous protests from the richest tenants) and not only did the deficit eventually turn into a surplus but overall things were getting better in the condo building as a whole. Then, because Clinton fiddled with a maid, the rich meanies in the condo building got one of their simple children elected to be President of the condo board, knowing that he would follow orders and cut fees (taxes). He did and the condo went right back into deficit.

When all the borrowing and financial shenanigans that were being done to keep the condo afloat finally led to financial collapse, the condo residents elected a new, responsible, wise and good person to be President: Barack Obama. This enraged the rich meanies who immediately demagogued the torch and pitchfork crowd into revolutionary fervor by framing the new President's responsible approach to condo maintenance as "socialism","command economy" etc.

Anyway, I've attached a visual picture of what I described above. Note that  from 1947 until 1981 the deficit rarely got larger than 1% of GDP (the little spike down to 2.5% in 1975 is clearly a result of the Vietnam War ending). The deficit was brought back to zero by the time Reagan took office (1981). Reagan reduced taxes and, I think not coincidentally, increased the deficit to nearly 3% of GDP by 1983. The deficit stayed large until 1993, when Clinton increased the condo fee (by a very small amount) and the deficit started to turn into a surplus (it's at that point that one could have argued that taxes were too high; but I'm very conservative financially and like to have a surplus on hand in case of emergencies so I would have said that the taxes were probably just right). When Bush II entered office, in 2001, he immediately lowered taxes considerably (on the upper bracket mainly) and the surplus just as immediately started to plunge into deficit. Despite this, many residents of the condo building still believe that condo fees are too high. Go figure.