I'm from the UK and now live in California. Income tax rates aren't very different. As a proportion of GDP, Government spending in the US is only a couple of p

I'm from the UK and now live in California. Income tax rates aren't very different. As a proportion of GDP, Government spending in the US is only a couple of percentage points lower than the UK. The US actually spends slightly more on public healthcare than the UK, 7.9% vs 7.3%. Of course healthcare here is so horrifically inefficient that another 8.5% of GDP is spent privately... http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT