Regardless of your political leanings, it's naive to believe that these problems today are the result of deregulation. I'd be interested in hearing how one explains away Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the CRA. For that matter, there are those who have been pointing out the bias towards debt versus equity financing because of high corporate taxes (interest rates after all being tax deductible). Sorry buddy, it's rich people who pay most of the taxes anyway.
Don't forget the Federal Reserve, the most evil of all regulation.
As for the rich, they not only pay most of the taxes (that end up going to services they are least likely to use), but they also buy lots of stuff (increasing jobs needed), invest in companies/municipalities/fed via stocks and bonds, and save (which provides credit for others). So even the rich, just by being rich help others.
I'm not sure I buy the 'Rich don't use what they pay for' argument when it comes to taxes. Just because you're not living in government housing or collecting any welfare doesn't necessarily mean you're using fewer tax dollars.
The US military industrial complex, the largest socialist institution in the world, exists in part to protect the wealth of this nation. If the US was a much poorer nation, we would have significantly less need for a large military (nor could we afford it). If you're wealthy, you're probably just as reliant on roads and airports, perhaps even more so than a poor person who probably walks/bikes more often. The wealthy are also completely dependent on affordable, readily available education (K-12 and higher education) to train the workforce. Then there's all the wealth created in the private sector that have been reaped from research originally conducted by NASA, the NIH, and for the military. And lets not get started on corporate welfare which props up everyone's investments in the domestic equities markets.
Most of what I've listed is an indirect benefit, but lets not pretend that the wealthy have decoupled themselves from the spendings of the US Government. Spending is rarely cut for just this reason: the big money backing the politicians doesn't want its share of the government cheese to disappear. It's no accident true small government proponents are marginalized and replaced with phony doppelgangers spewing platitudes about "small government" only to turn around and feed the very beast they've been elected to destroy.
