That’s the absurd title to a blog post over at The Atlantic today. The writer claims that the U.S. government is now the smallest it’s been since LBJ was president. The article is making the rounds among leftists, who, against all reason and common sense, have managed to convince themselves that the US government is getting smaller.
The claim is based on a calculation of total government employment as a ratio of the total US population. Right off the bat we know that comparing these ratios from 1968 and today will be off. This is largely because in 1968, most people whose salaries were funded by taxpayer sweat actually worked for the government. There weren’t mercenaries shooting up foreigners back then, or an enormous government-funded non-profit sector or legions of “consultants” who are really just government employees making extra-large salaries.
On top of this is the fact that government size is not only measured in the number of government employees. Better measures would include the US prison population, or taxes paid, or pages of government regulations or the number of federal laws, or the number of people groped by TSA pedophiles. Needless to say, all of these things have exploded in recent decades. On top of that, you have the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on salt, fat, guns, raw milk, and a number of other things.
Yep, government sure is a shadow of its former self!
But, to make it simple, let’s just look at government spending. In 1968, the US government spent $883 dollars for every one of the 201 million Americans, or annual outlays totaling 178.1 billion. In 2011, the US government spent a whopping $11,493 for every one of the 313 million Americans for total outlays of 3.6 trillion. That’s an increase of 1,923 percent since 1968. The CPI over this period increased 545 percent, so we’re talking an enormous increase, even when adjusted for the official inflation rate.
We can also look at this another way. The amount of money taken from each American has increased almost 2,000 percent since 1968, which is more than triple the inflation rate.
Recommended podcasts:Francis Scott Key and the Forgotten Washington Race Riot of 1835, KERA Think (Aug. 9, 2012). “What role did ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ lyricist Francis Scott Key play in preserving slavery? We’ll talk this hour with Jefferson Morley, former Washington correspondent for Salon and author of the new book Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835.” This is a fascinating interview. The book sounds great. Key, known for the nauseating, jingoistic, nationalist Star Spangled Banner, was a wheeler-dealer lawyer-politician who parlayed his fame with the song into Washington power, and was finally recruited by Andrew Jackson to help suppress the growing anti-slavery movement in Washington, D.C. He jumped into the job with zeal, arresting and prosecuting people who wrote in favor of abolition or slaves’ rights—by charging them with sedition or libel (or seditious libel). Another evil “patriot” (like Washington who conscripted slaves, used his slave’s teeth for his false teeth, shot deserters, killed tax rebels, and so on). Next time you see “patriots” putting hand over heart to the “Star Spangled Banner,” remind them of the scoundrel fascist who wrote it. He makes Emma Lazarus seem heroic.
