1 - Percent of GDP is a good measure of the burden of the federal government's spending. (Regulatory burden is more complex and outside the scope of this post). But it isn't a measure of the size of the government. If every citizen became richer, the GDP would rise, but that wouldn't cause a need for the government to become larger. (even though it would enable the government to become larger without being more of a burden)
2 - The chart you post show that even as a percentage of GDP, government keeps getting bigger. Yes by that measure there was a drop after WWI and WWII, and a small drop in the 90s. But the last was just a blip in the uptrend we are now back on the trend-line as if the 90s never happened. WWI wasn't just a blip, or at least it was a huge one, but we hit WWI levels in the Korean War, and again in the 60s and have since passed them. Only WWII still stands beyond today's levels, and in WWII over half of everything produced in the US went to government spending.
Now we have over 40%, and you seem to think this growth is just fine and dandy. Socialism narrowly defined is government ownership of the means of production. With some (in some cases temporary) exceptions like GM, and Fannie and Freddie, we aren't moving strongly in that direction, but we are on a long term trend line heading back to government spending the majority of the government's wealth. In WWII that was understandable, we faced essentially total war against major powers. It was also temporary. Now we don't have anything like that level of crisis (whatever your view of the wars today, WWII cost dozens of times more as a percentage of GDP, and no the financial crisis and current recession, isn't remotely close to the equivalent of WWII). Without entitlement reform we will pass WWII (a period when we had 8+million under arms in a country with less than half the population we have today, and where civilian use of many products was rationed). That may just mean that you think we will have serious entitlement reform, that an unsustainable trend will not be sustained. I hope so, but I'm not highly confident that the trend will break soon. |
