If you own a monopoly in a market, like the government does, for any product that you sell, there is a pricing strategy involved in which you raise the price to a certain point. The place where you want to stop increasing the price is the point at which it causes reduced sales volume to such an extent that it reduces profits. This is a basic economic principle called price theory.
The same principle can be applied to taxes. The government needs to collect a certain amount of taxes to provide the income necessary to build and maintain an infrastructure for businesses to function within. After a certain tax level, however, the amount of money taken out of the economy actually reduces the amount of tax revenue that can be generated.
This is the current state of things in our country. Our government entities (municipal, county, state and federal) long ago increased taxes to a point at which it became prohibitive for businesses to thrive and in effect caused a reduction in potential tax revenues, in effect cannibalizing the system.
What happens when individual states increase their taxes? A great exodus occurs like the one in my hometown Buffalo-Niagara region to other states with more business-friendly tax structures. I am seeing a similar trend in California in the few years that I've lived here (My old roommate lost his job because the company he worked for moved to Nevada for its lower taxes).
What do you think happens when the federal government raises taxes in the same fashion? Our jobs get shipped overseas. Lower wages in third-world countries are partially to blame for this outsourcing trend, but the problem is exacerbated by the relatively high taxes and prohibitive regulatory framework that companies and workers encounter in the United States.
In a short while, our Senators and Representatives are going to attempt to once again increase taxes. This will do nothing but worsen economic conditions with a return to the downward spiral that started in 2008. This is exactly what happened at the beginning of the Great Depression. Let's not let history repeat itself. We, as the people of the United States of America, need to create such an uproar against increasing taxes that our Representatives and Senators have no choice but to reverse this trend. We actually need to cut taxes to stop the cannibalization of our economy by its government.
The problem isn't taxes... the problem is that we have socialism in the public sector. Lowering taxes is good in the sense that it reduces the size of the problem... but as long as we have socialism in the public sector there will always be negative externalities... such as unnecessary wars. The government will borrow money to fund these wars and then taxes will go back up.
So the solution isn't to lower taxes... it's to create a market in the public sector by allowing people to choose where their taxes go (pragmatarianism). In a pragmatarian system... congress would still control the tax rate. The difference is... taxpayers would control congress's funding. So if taxpayers weren't happy the tax rate... then they could boycott congress.
What do you think would happen to the tax rate? At first I was pretty darn certain that the tax rate would decrease... a lot. But then, after thinking about it... I came to the conclusion that the market in the public sector would actually be better than the market in the private sector. Why? Because the value signals in the public market would be more accurate.
The foundation of the private market is "one price fits all" (OPFA). But does one price really fit all? Does everybody who purchases a book for $7 value it equally? Of course not. Everybody's different so one price really does not fit all. As a result, value signals in the private market are inaccurate. They aren't totally inaccurate but they are still inaccurate.
In the public market though... the foundation really would not be OPFA. Maybe I value space colonization more than you do so I'd spend more of my tax dollars on space colonization than you would. So value signals would be more accurate and the tax rate would increase until it reached 100%.
In any case, you're right that the current system cannibalizes itself. But attacking the tax rate really isn't striking at the root of the problem. The root of the problem is that we have socialism in the public sector. As long as you condone some socialism... you'll always inadvertently undermine your case for markets.