Your real tax rate: 40%

Now assume the work for themselves They pay they only need to live off of 40k so they pay themselves 70k and get to invest 30k on advertizing without paying taxes on that value. Note: numbers are not accurate but they do give context. The idea, is companies can invest in future earns though things like advertizing or R&D without paying taxes on the income uses to pay for that advertizing.

Now you are supposed to pay yourselves market rate, but if you generate 300k in value each year you don't need to pay yourself that money.

Wanna see something really cool? Look at a satellite image of Denmark. It's almost entirely farmland, with little spots of ultra-dense village or city every so often. No suburban wasteland. I'd be 20% happier just for that.

1) The cost of living will not be the same; and 2) Income is no measure of quality of life/satisfaction.

As an example, what if average incomes are higher, but so is income inequality? What effect does this have on the society (and the standard of licing of those within it) as a whole?

I also think jbooth has a point in that these are self-selected groups.

For example, it's pretty well accepted that it's better to be high-income in the US than in Sweden, so if you for some reason have a population that is in the upper income levels in the US (due to being white and long-resident, for example) it's not surprising that they would have higher income than in Sweden. As Sweden is a much more redistributive society than the US, the upper income levels in the US are, as a matter of speaking, subsidized by the lower-income levels. And there are a lot more lower income levels in the US than in Sweden.

The conclusion that "The U.S would be even richer and have much less poverty if it was made up entirely of Swedes" is ridiculous. It's equivalent to saying "the US would be even richer if it was made up entirely of the people that make a lot of money", which completely ignores the fact that the US economy depends on low-wage earners to a completely different degree than Sweden does.

Price gouging.

Interest on debt for past wars isn't something that can be cut.

"State Department financing of foreign arms sales" is diplomacy, not military spending. (It may be dumb diplomacy, but it's diplomacy.)

One of the QDR review panels talked about current issues in defense. It's not authoritative direction, but it does give a taste of how the military is about more than just competing with the next peer. Here's what they had to say about its goals:

  1. America has for most of the last century pursued 
  four enduring security interests:

    a. The defense of the American homeland

    b. Assured access to the sea, air, space, and 
    cyberspace

    c. The preservation of a favorable balance of power 
    across Eurasia that prevents authoritarian domination 
    of that region

    d. Providing for the global ―common good through 
    such actions as humanitarian aid, development 
    assistance, and disaster relief.


  2. Five key global trends face the nation as it seeks 
  to sustain its role as the leader of an international 
  system that protects the interests outlined above:

    a. Radical Islamist extremism and the threat of 
    terrorism

    b. The rise of new global great powers in Asia

    c. Continued struggle for power in the Persian Gulf 
    and the greater Middle East

    d. An accelerating global competition for resources

    e. Persistent problems from failed and failing states.


  3. These five key global trends have framed a range of  
  choices for the United States:

    a. These trends are likely to place an increased 
    demand on American "hard power" to preserve regional 
    balances; while diplomacy and development have 
    important roles to play, the world‘s first-order 
    concerns will continue to be security concerns.

    b. The various tools of "smart power" – diplomacy, 
    engagement, trade, targeted communications about 
    American ideals and intentions, development of 
    grassroots political and economic institutions – 
    will be increasingly necessary to protect America‘s 
    national interests.

    c. Today‘s world offers unique opportunities for 
    international cooperation, but the United States needs 
    to guide continued adaptation of existing international 
    institutions and alliances and to support development of 
    new institutions appropriate to the demands of the 21st 
    century. This will not happen without global confidence 
    in American leadership, its political, economic, and 
    military strength, and steadfast national purpose.

    d. Finally, America cannot abandon a leadership role in 
    support of its national interests. To do so will simply 
    lead to an increasingly unstable and unfriendly global 
    climate and eventually to conflicts America cannot 
    ignore, which we must then prosecute with limited 
    choices under unfavorable circumstances -- and with 
    stakes that are higher than anyone would like.

Here's another example of a policy goal not directly related to homeland defense or beating someone else's military (This from the Nuclear Posture report):

    Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons

    The long-term goal of U.S. policy is the complete 
    elimination of nuclear weapons. At this point,
    it is not clear when this goal can be achieved. 
    Pursuing these NPR recommendations will strengthen 
    the security of the United States and its allies and 
    partners and bring us significant steps closer to 
    the President’s vision of a world without nuclear 
    weapons.

    The conditions that would ultimately permit the 
    United States and others to give up their nuclear
    weapons without risking greater international 
    instability and insecurity are very demanding. 
    Among those are the resolution of regional disputes 
    that can motivate rival states to acquire and 
    maintain nuclear weapons, success in halting the    
    proliferation of nuclear weapons, much greater 
    transparency into the programs and capabilities of 
    key countries of concern, verification methods 
    and technologies capable of detecting violations of 
    disarmament obligations, and enforcement measures 
    strong and credible enough to deter such violations. 
    Clearly, such conditions do not exist today. But we 
    can – and must – work actively to create those 
    conditions.

However, I think there might be a naming problem, here. If it seems likely to have practical applications at some point, it's not "fundamental" or "pure" research anymore. Companies doing research into quantum computers or molecular assembly are certainly doing so because they expect to make a profit on it eventually, but the very fact that they have this expectation means that it's disqualified from fundamental research. I still think that there are examples of companies funding general research on the assumption that something will come of it, but it's hard to disentangle the effects of government. The most prominent example, Bell Labs, was run by a government-supported monopoly, for example.