>Secondly, why does the government need to spend to match GDP? The more productive we are, the more the government spends? I have been harping on this for year

>Secondly, why does the government need to spend to match GDP? The more productive we are, the more the government spends? I have been harping on this for years Tax as a percent of the economy has gone through the roof, both as a percent of GDP, and as inflation adjusted dollars. If you compare to a benchmark like the 1940s, tax% of GDP has more than doubled, and GDP has increased ~4.5x. This means someone today pays about 10X the taxes (controlling for for inflation!). State and local taxes have grown even faster than federal taxes. Is the government providing 10X more services per capita? Do we have 10X the schooling? 10X the police? 10X the roads? These numbers are already scaled for both inflation and population, so it should actually productivity.