At least on the federal level, about a quarter is spent on Social Security (income transfer), another quarter is spent on healthcare (mostly Medicare, with some Medicaid) and another fifth goes to defense / warfare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget.
U.S. tax mostly goes to transfer payments and defense / warfare. Whether that is a good thing is debatable; personally, I'd like to see more innovation and less warfare/welfare (http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Bring...), but by pretty much any reasonable standard the U.S. already pays lots of tax.
Actually, the U.S. government already spends about 41% of GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_perce..., and that's roughly comparable with some European countries. So taxes are already extremely high.
At least on the federal level, about a quarter is spent on Social Security (income transfer), another quarter is spent on healthcare (mostly Medicare, with some Medicaid) and another fifth goes to defense / warfare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget.
U.S. tax mostly goes to transfer payments and defense / warfare. Whether that is a good thing is debatable; personally, I'd like to see more innovation and less warfare/welfare (http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Bring...), but by pretty much any reasonable standard the U.S. already pays lots of tax.