It looks like that governments are spending less money to enforce it's rules and laws. I think the money spent can be misleading for some cases when determining

It looks like that governments are spending less money to enforce it's rules and laws. I think the money spent can be misleading for some cases when determining whether the government has shrink in a given area. For example, it would have been much more expensive in the 1970's to monitor everyone's communications than today, and even if their funding for spying on domestic communications has dropped by, say, 50%, one would hardly argue that the government has reduced it's surveillance in this area. For this case, and I'm sure there are others, spending less money might mean the government has shrunk in terms of number of employees, but it doesn't mean the government has shrunk in terms of power.