I'd very much like to see government downsize, but if you want to pay taxes at the level at which the country was founded, you also have to restrict government activity to that level.
Not sure if that is tenable.
The US is the textbook experiment which proves that even minarchy (a minimal government) can't work.
All form of governments, no matter how small, tend to grow into huge socialist monsters (the usa is the largest employer in the world, second only to China, maybe).
Even if that very first government was founded on not collecting very little taxes for this very reason.
The USA have 330 million citizens and 10 million people without valid residency, in total something around 340 million citizens. The public sector clocks in at 15%, which includes the military and USPS. That is, seriously, not much.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-servi...
[1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/...
Well, say you work at a company with 100 developers. That's who's making the stuff. Everybody else is there to make sure the stuff gets made. There's a manager for every 6-8 developers (13-17), and there's a couple managers for those managers. Add in HR and you're already up to about a 25% overhead and we haven't talked about equipment and buildings and customer management and advertising and litigation and taxes and so on and so forth.
What exactly is a fair tax?