> The "small government" movement has taken a long time but it's finally winning in America
From the outside looking in, it's either:
* the "small government" movement, which only wants to keep big government small if it's filled by the other side of the aisle and grow it otherwise, or
* the "less regulation is more profits" movement
Both variants are ultimately corrupt to the bone.
Real small government voices don't seem to be present or growing in Washington. Then again, I don't follow your news as closely as you might.
Small government is nearly impossible to get from big government because the only way to change government is to get into it, and once you are in it big government is good for you.
The best we can hope for is a revolution followed by a small government that grows slowly.
How are you defining "grows slowly vs grows quickly"?. What is the ideal rate of growth?
The executive branch by itself has grown from 699 to 2079 since 1940 to 2014 [1]. That's a growth of just under 3x. By comparison, US population has grown from 132 million to 318 million in that time period according to Google. A growth of ~2.5x. The US GDP has grown by 14x in that time period [2]. Just to imagine that size, the US economy today is larger than the world economy in 1940 (now sure there's some inflation along with that so the numbers aren't strictly comparable.
However, if you look at the total federal government size itself, it appears to haven't really changed since 1984 [3] so this growth in the executive branch is just shifting employees around. The government hasn't been growing since the 80s.
So I'll reask my question. What level of growth is acceptable? Why has 0 growth in 40 years still not been enough to achieve the "ideal" "small government size"?
The numbers you're sharing here are not making your argument for you. The number of people employed by federal executive departments is in the millions.
That's not really addressing the questions posed. What is the point in time at which the government had ever been "small enough"? What is the size that's "small enough" for you?
Great. So you have the same number of people managing extremely more money & supporting a larger population. Government has shrunk. Government is either more productive or severely under performing things they need to do (assuming they're even working on the right things).
If "small government" means reduce US government spending, that's interesting because the only different between Democrats & "small government Republicans" is that the latter also cut taxes while increasing spending. Democrats don't go out of their way to advertise they need to increase taxes, but at least they're not outright lying & ignoring the problem.
Unless by small government the movement really means "no government". It's interesting to me that government abolishing is associated with anarchists on the left and "small government" movement is on the right but the "small government" movement is so poorly defined on what goal it's trying to achieve that in practice there's actually no difference in the outcome being achieved.
Also the basic premise of the argument doesn't even hold AFAICT. The size of government since 1984 has shrunk from 9.7 million to 9.1 million in 2015. So the government has shrunk despite supposedly being in the era of big government. This is despite a growth of nearly 100 million people in the US.
From the outside looking in, it's either:
* the "small government" movement, which only wants to keep big government small if it's filled by the other side of the aisle and grow it otherwise, or
* the "less regulation is more profits" movement
Both variants are ultimately corrupt to the bone.
Real small government voices don't seem to be present or growing in Washington. Then again, I don't follow your news as closely as you might.