> Allocating money through the government has not been a particularly successful strategy for improving the overall standard of living.

What are you even basing this assumption on? Just quickly comparing the highest ranking countries by Human Development Index with the highest government budgets per capita and the highest income tax rates would, if anything, support the opposite conclusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/personal-income-ta...