On Tax Revenue and the Government(American)

           What I'm about to present is the perspective of a poor person hoping for aid from the government...  which I feel as a citizen, and as the descendant of generations of citizens and veterans, I have reason to hope for...  especially seeing as I'm legally and medically disabled.

           First, let's go over what we spend our money on while slashing social services and relief for the poor.  We have the largest percentage of the population of citizens behind bars of any nation on Earth(It runs $60,000 per citizen inmate per year.) Then all the costs of probation officers ruling the lives of other citizens. 

        Other people with guns: huge guns, flying guns, swimming guns: We have by far the largest military in the world. No other nation on Earth spends per capita of G.D.P. on weaponry and bearers of weaponry anywhere near what we do. Our spending on 'defense' outstrips the next 8 nations combined...  mostly preparation for nuclear wars that should never be fought. The global thinking, aside from the U.S.A., is that the nuclear deterrence is sufficient(missile-defense will never be anywhere near fool-proof.) 

            If that's not terrifying enough: We have a diversity, dozens, of agencies just to spy on, in actuality, both American citizens and the rest of the world.  At the time of the Snowden leak, they were at least monitoring every phone call made in the nation...  not to speak of virtually all internet activity.  Not only is this unsuitable: It's an incredibly expensive alternative to constitutional freedoms.

            What doesn't go to all this weaponry, captivity, and hostile surveillance goes to things a poor person doesn't have much respect for: endangered armadillos, endangered carpenter ants...  a thousand national parks, national monuments...  museums and grants a politically black-listed author like myself would never receive, nor the average citizen in need.

               To get to the point, I feel the government raises more than enough revenue, and that the poor and afflicted should be aided.  I feel there are other things that could be de-prioritized, or even that simply by innovating a bit we could create a more efficient and beneficial system.

                 Despite being a Democrat all my adult life from generations of active Democrats, I still philosophically look at the picture, and comprehend that the corporate rate needs to come down for the purpose of international competition. I don't believe it needs to come down all the way to twenty percent...  but we Democrats lost the 2016 election by failing to listen to the Sanders movement.  We're in the minority and while resisting when we have a sound and compelling stand to make, should elsewhere seek to be relevant by governing in a diplomatic fashion.

                 Addendum: Though I favor taxing the rich to a rational degree, the Estate Tax involves taxing money that's already been taxed and put in the bank. By my moral logic, that's wrong.  We need a simpler system, and one in which money is only taxed one time... not whenever the government feels like taxing it.