Our government is extraordinarily effective for what it is. We have one of the most sophisticated countries in the world, and our tax burden as a percentage of GDP is at the low end of any country you'd want to live in.
By the way, the Heritage Foundation has gotten to the point where it's about as bad as DailyKOS. They've given up even the pretense of objectivity and descended into blatant ideological demagoguery.
Heritage Foundation has gotten to the point where it's about as bad as DailyKOS
It's impossible to find any news site, reporter, researcher, or article that doesn't have some angle.
If I find information on the DailyKOS that appears factual and is worth considering then I do so. The Heritage article linked to has a wealth of research pulled from easily verifiable sources, mostly the government itself.
There is a line between characterizing the facts to support your angle and misleading your reader. Heritage Foundation crosses that line.
I wrote them off for their recent trumpeting of the fact that 47% of people have no federal income tax liability to falsely imply that half the country doesn't carry any of the tax burden. This goes beyond having an angle, it's just plain intellectually dishonest. The standard of discourse for an ostensibly respectable academic organization should be higher than that of a political campaign. At one time Heritage Foundation adhered to a higher standard. It no longer does.
I think that first word there is probably the main problem "we" have with the whole notion.
You even go on to list examples how our historically unrivaled well-funded government[1] has failed to do anything "effective" of the sort:
health care, energy reform, infrastructure, social safety net
You should really add in "education and housing" to the list of extraordinary government failures.
[1] http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/federal-spending