....but the money doesn't filter down - that's the great free market myth...
what happens is that high earners in low tax regimes don't really contribute very much to the state coffers, which means that the state has to find other sources of revenue, resulting in massive borrowing and massive debt.
Now I agree that a lot of money gets wasted, but it's too easy to blame spongers (a problem, which in any case is always exaggerated by the rightwing tabloids), it's trident, it's ministries that don't do anything, it's excessive pay at the higher levels of the civil service, too many people on the state payroll and also the massive costs of an olympics we can't afford and an increasingly authoriarian state backed up by an increasingly powerful quasi-military police we don't want and a multi-billion pound anti-drugs strategy which has been a total disaster for nearly 40 years. The welfare state, the environment, transport meanwhile, are all under massive pressure and even saving money on waste elsewhere isn't going to be enough to address those challenges. The good times are over. That money HAS to be funded... Companies talk about corporate social responsibility and give us all the PR about how much they recycle yet their directors don't want to pay up on a personal level. It stinks.
On a more philosophical point, taxation should be to fund public services but also to stop society falling into chaos. If you follow the philosophy espoused by certain people [ie fuk the poor] then you are creating an underclass, an isolated, restless, ill-educated poor that has the means to cause social chaos. It is therefore in the rich's self-interest (let alone the morality of it) to cough up and help their fellow countrymen, because otherwise we are ALL going to pay the price - and that is exactly what has been happening... far higher crime in US and UK in the free-market years than 'scary socialist' Europe.... and it isn't entirely coincidental. Bashing the poor might be fun in the pub, but ultimately the reasons for poverty are wide and complex and shutting the door, saying they're all scroungers isn't going to take the problem away...