But I'd recommend selling enough of your BTC to pay taxes so you're not underwater if it goes down in value.

why do we need to keep growing gov't and adding more and more rules/programs/etc.? Certainly we don't need to keep spending more and more, cut it off and some point and stop growing it for some period..

Here's one good reason -- decades of underinvestment in infrastructure. The top tax bracket in the 1950's when the Interstate highway system was funded was 90% - now it's 37% and even that is mostly avoided by the most wealthy.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure

Another reason is the impending climate disaster -- former arable land will become unfarmable, many coastal areas will become uninhabitable or need expensive flood control, etc. This is going to cause huge costs and will almost certainly require government assistance.

And carbon reduction will also be expensive.

Perhaps too we can stop irrigating desert and grow things like almonds (and actual food) in places like Iowa (with the most class 1 farm land in the US), instead of Iowa growing animal fodder and ethanol.

Most of these "crises" are self-inflicted crises in management.

A really interesting read on the rust and cost is the book "Rust: the longest war." It outlines how quickly costs escalate over time when something as simple as Rust is not dealt with and it left to build up.

Also, 90% top marginal tax wasn't really paid. Look at our historic tax revenue vs GPD. it's remarkably consistent, around ~17-20% no matter what policies we have floating around.

I am certain that we could reduce billions in spending to find money for actually important things. we do not need to keep increasing spending/revenue. we need to decrease spending and keep the same revenue. that's the easiest path.