Or at least a chart from his favorite textbook (guess whose). Remarking on the above, Dr. Greg sez
“The most noteworthy feature of these data is the substantial growth of government from 1929 to 1945. It is easy to understand why the size of government grew so much during this period: The nation was responding to the crises of the Great Depression and, especially, World War II. But what is noteworthy is that while these crises were transitory, the increase in the scope of government was permanent.”
One can actually feel the poor man’s blood running cold as he wrote that last sentence. But I find it a little hard not to gag on Greg’s reasoning. He seems to forget that after WWII we had a little “crisis” known as the Cold War. The Soviet Union, and international communism in general, while it lacked (fortunately) Adolph Hitler’s insatiable bloodlust, was a far more formidable foe than Nazism. The trillions of dollars we spent driving communism into the ground was money well spent.
What’s really striking, I would say, about “these data” is not the rise in the size of government, but the fact that since 1945 the federal government’s share of GDP has hardly budged, oscillating around the 20% level for more than 60 years. Not exactly exponential growth, one would have to say. It’s really state and local governments that have increased their share, thanks largely, I would guess, to spending on education (too much of it wasted) and prisons (a great deal of it wasted, due in particular to that ongoing disgrace, the “war on drugs”).
There’s an awful lot of money that could, and should, and won’t be, cut out of federal spending. About a quarter of our massive defense budget is for Cold War leftovers—really make-work public works jobs without any, you know, public works. And don’t get me started on the war on drugs, farm subsidies, and overly generous health care for the elderly (which ought to be means-tested). No, don’t even get me started. On top of that, I’m almost as worried as Greg is about the spending plans of the Obama Administration, particularly on energy and the environment, which I doubt will be nearly as “scientific” as Obama and all his advisors want us to believe, and in fact believe themselves. But the total pitch that Greg is making here, that life has gone down hill since 1929, is total jive. Life is a hell of a lot better now than it used to be, and a lot of the reason why is due to increased government spending. And defeating the commies, yeah, that was a good thing. A good thing for capitalism, in fact.
