I'd argue that we shouldn't expect government expenses to be effected that much by advances in productivity. Government services largely exist to handle situations that are inherently inefficient (disability, national defense, civil rights, education, elder care, etc.).
What's the argument that corporations should be laying a lower share of the GDP? Due to their greater proportionate wealth, corporations and the wealthy can better afford to pay. They also tend to disproportionately benefit from the government.
Service delivery can be improved by advances in productivity for both public and private sectors equally - The difference is that the private sector is constantly focusing on reducing costs of the most expensive business areas. For most businesses this is operations/service delivery, and reducing these costs allows the business to extract higher profit and gain the flexibility to compete on price. Employees who deliver cost out effectively are also rewarded. There is risk but also high reward.
Government organisations don't have the same profit incentive as they aren't in a competitive market, nor are there any personal incentives for executives to achieve these efficiencies. Government does eventually implement productivity improvement however it lags behind the private sector, with investment in productivity only occuring once risk has effectively been eliminated.
I've worked in both sectors, and people working in each sector are equally frustrated with inefficiency and seek to improve things. The problem with government isn't really the people nor the agency nor the sector, it's that the organisation and it's people only gain rewards by improving the status of the politician running the agency.
Nowadays saying that $X billion is being spent is more important than whether it successfully achieved the outcome. The effect of this is that one politician can announce $X billion to more efficiently achieve the same outcome as another politician announcing $2X billion at half the productivity and the second politician sounds like (or can easily be spun to sound like) they are achieving more/ care more than the first. The end result is massive expenditure on very little.
They absolutely benefit significantly more, from roads for shipping/traveling to educated workforce, to a more stable economy, more stable international trades, to a more stable electrical grid, plumbing, more stable buildings to house their business, and on and on etc… etc…
it’s absolutely wild to me how people fail to see how much more companies benefit from taxes.
The tax code can be looked at as written by the rich to pad their pockets. But it can also be looked at as the main lever by which the government manipulates us to get what it wants: affordable housing, high employment, cheap energy. There are a lot of real estate, business, and exploration / mining tax breaks presumably because the government wants to incentivize that activity.
The book “Tax Free Wealth” covers this and points out that the tax code looks pretty similar across all western countries when it comes to the way the activity the code is trying to stimulate.
I personally don’t like the tax code being used for such manipulations regardless of the motive behind it.
Most politicians are doing all sorts of real estate deals on the side. That’s why there are all kinds of tax breaks and incentives for real estate. It’s not to encourage such activity, but rather to directly benefit themselves and their associates.
What's the argument that corporations should be laying a lower share of the GDP? Due to their greater proportionate wealth, corporations and the wealthy can better afford to pay. They also tend to disproportionately benefit from the government.