http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/05/striking-thought.html What this would mean then is that total U.S. federal government tax collections in any given year might be able to be described as a function of median household income (aka "the tax base") and real economic growth per capita, as represented by the ratio of nominal economic growth per capita and inflation, the latter in the form of the GDP deflator.
Nowhere in that formulation do we see a place for tax rates, as the amount of tax collections from year to year seem to be virtually independent of this factor.
This is why things are worse than most people realize. You simply can't collect more than 20% of GDP. Once our interest payments are more than say 1/2 of that amount, no one is going to believe that our debt will be paid, forcing higher rates on treasuries, further ensuring our debt won't be paid. The statistics suggest that unless the median income rises ( in real terms) you can't collect any more money- and now any sort of tracking of that fact is gone. If we were any other country we would currently be in the situation that Greece is in right now. We need to grow our economy- grow it faster than it has ever grown in our history to escape this fate, and even now it may be too late. When the dollar is done, it will be done forever.
NOTE: this graph shows the "Clinton surpluses"so IT DOES NOT include over 3 Trillion of Bush's Borrowing from the SS trust fund., nor Clinton's 1-2 trillion in borrowing off the books to achieve his "surplus"- so things are much worse than even this graph indicates.
