(FORTUNE Magazine) – YOU'VE ACCEPTED the grim international comparisons that show that Americans don't invest as much as the Japanese, save as much as the Germans, or relax as much as the French. Now you're being told, in a country-by-country survey published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (see first chart), that you don't give your government enough money. Perhaps you disagree. Last year 55% of respondents told the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago their taxes were too high. More than 60% of people responding to a Money magazine poll felt they were taxed too much; only 20% would be willing to pay more to help lower the federal deficit. In an ABC News/Washington Post survey last fall, 62% said the government should cut taxes. Among Californians, who got hit with an immense state tax increase in 1991, 57% told Los Angeles Times pollsters that taxes have been raised so high ''people can't handle the burden.'' Taking all taxes together, in California and other high-tax states many earners face marginal rates exceeding 50%. Like so many statistical exercises, the much publicized OECD comparison is true as far as it goes. But if Americans should indeed be surrendering more to government, the comparison offers little guidance about how much more -- or for what purposes. The main difference between the U.S. and other countries is that Americans transfer less money among themselves for such things as Social Security and welfare. Look at government purchases of goods and services, mainly salaries, and the picture changes (second chart). On this score, Americans are not undertaxed at all. They allocate about 18% of the nation's resources to government, similar to the share in many other countries. This is what pays for education, police protection, and other operations. The 18% is also the fundamental measure of ''fiscal drag'' -- the burden taxes place upon an economy -- says Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, who also advises the federal Office of Management and Budget. Says Kotlikoff: ''Every time the public sector buys paper to publish regulations or hires an administrator, that reduces resources available for saving and investment by the more efficient private sector.'' U.S. taxpayers' visceral sense of fiscal drag may be heightened now because the Cold War's end has reduced the prospective benefits of defense spending. Today 5.4% of U.S. GDP goes to the military, far more than the share spent by most other developed countries. Thus even at similar levels of government purchases, those countries deliver relatively more in the way of directly useful services. The U.S. could certainly afford to increase transfer payments. Such funds merely go from one citizen's pocket to another's, with the government as intermediary. But some economists, like Kotlikoff, worry that tax rates on income are already so high they deter work effort by both those who pay and those who get. And to reach the international norm, the U.S. would have to double its transfer payments. THE SOCIAL COMPACT would not stand for that. High-tax, high-transfer countries tend to be culturally cohesive. ''In more diverse societies like the U.S., there is a reluctance to contribute to the common pot,'' says Richard Rahn, president of Novecon, a firm that advises Eastern European countries on economic policy. ''Finland, on the other hand, is like an extended New England town, where peer pressure on government employees makes for efficient delivery of services, so citizens more readily support public spending.'' Sweden's huge welfare state mostly shifts money around within the middle class to support families and children. In the U.S., eminent Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith detects that ''indignation over taxes is mostly about welfare,'' a transfer between dissimilar groups of people. Indeed, the Census Bureau calculates that government takes $22,000 on average from a household in the top fifth of earners and transfers $8,800 of it to one in the bottom fifth. The U.S. also trails behind most other industrial countries in infrastructure investment. In 1989 (the latest year data are available for international comparisons) federal, state, and local governments spent 1.6% of GDP on roads, bridges, tunnels, and the like, vs. 3% elsewhere. Since then, state and local governments have sold a record $110 billion of bonds to finance infrastructure. That might bump up the investment share of GDP by a few tenths, but it would still leave the U.S. short of its typical competitor by about a point -- roughly $50 billion. Americans do seem willing to take on new tax burdens -- provided the funds are spent wisely. Despite feeling strapped by recession, voters in 1990 and 1991 approved more than 60% of state and local bond issues on the ballot, including nearly all those for transportation and pollution control, according to the Bond Buyer, a trade newsletter. A Money survey found that a great majority would pay more if they could be guaranteed the money would go to education or health insurance or even housing for the homeless. Other polls show that people are most supportive of local government where services like education and garbage pickup are direct and visible. AMERICANS feel overtaxed mainly when they conjure up visions of faceless bureaucrats who waste the money -- or squander it on somebody else's pork barrel projects. Government turned up at the bottom of the list when customer survey expert J.D. Power recently measured Americans' satisfaction with their country. And the U.S. is not alone. Last fall the Swedes, those consummate fans of state welfare, booted out the Socialists and elected a new government bent on lowering taxes and spending. The British confounded pollsters by reelecting the Tories because voters got spooked by the Labour Party's proposed tax increase. During the past decade U.S. voters seemed to want it both ways, seeking lower taxes when voting for Presidents but more services and more spending when they voted for Congress. Result: the huge federal deficit. The dichotomy apparently reflects citizens' willingness to take advantage of what's offered, even though they don't feel it's worth paying for. Yet at least some evidence suggests they would shoulder higher taxes if they could be sure that doing so would make life better for themselves, their children, and their children's children.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: FORTUNE CHART CAPTION: THE U.S. TAXES LESS. . . BUT BUYS ABOUT AS MUCH. . . AND SKIMPS ON INVESTMENT