It looks pretty steady around 17%. It was as high as 20% in the late 1990s. However, this does not include state and local taxes. I could not find a source for it. What is your source of information?
However, my main point was to refute the idea of some mythical past where the government was massively more funded, and therefore more competent and capable.
This also ignores the effect of the growing pie over time, but that is somewhat a tangent.
If someone is referencing back to the 1930s tax rates, those total receipts were closer to 10% of GDP when things like the Hoover Dam and Interstate System were being built.
Today, the rates are closer to 30% and the GDP being taxed is 25-30 times larger, controlling for inflation.
To me, this suggests that the reason we can't perform infrastructure projects is not lack of funding
By way of analogy, imagine someone making a $20k salary that can do big things while spending 10% of their salary projects. However, someone making $600k, spending 30% of that on projects can't get get meaningful work done.
These are the proportions we are talking about. It begs a lot of questions.
Are the projects really comparable? Did competence change? Did the working environment?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
It looks pretty steady around 17%. It was as high as 20% in the late 1990s. However, this does not include state and local taxes. I could not find a source for it. What is your source of information?