No one ever changes their mind

Good comment. Starting in the 1960s the right-wing of USA politics was able to stage a comeback based around rhetoric suggesting that government was too big. The movement won many battles and government shrunk, but no one ever changes their mind, so many people continue to use the sam rhetoric, as if it is still 1964 and the government is still too big.

This is perception more than anything else. I don’t see many people complaining that government was too big in the “golden age” of the 50’s and 60’s, yet total government revenue as a percentage of GDP has been pretty stable since then: http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/include/usgr_chart3p22.pn….

Indeed, if you factor out the huge increase in social security and medicare expenditures that result from the aging of the population between 1950 and today, the rest of government is probably smaller today than it was then.

Moreover, much of what seems to be “growth” in government is the result of transfer payments–things like Social Security checks that are taken out of one pocket in the private sector and deposited directly into another pocket in the private sector. In terms of bureaucratic machinery, at least the federal government has been shrinking: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/wired-workplace/2010/09/….

In 1950, there were 1.44 million federal workers for 150 million people. The number of federal employees peaked in absolute terms in 1990, at 2.25 million, but that number actually represents a decline in relative terms, because by then the U.S. had 250 million people. Today the federal workforce is at about 2.15 million, while the population is at 310 million. That is to say we have twice as many people as we did in 1950, but the headcount of the federal government is only 50% larger.

As for your other points: collusion, etc. We are substantially less regulated today than we were in the 1950’s and 1960’s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation#Deregulation_1970-…. Many major industries (trucking, airlines, energy, finance, communications) were deregulated between 1970-2000. With decreased regulation came decreased opportunity for regulatory capture.

The idea that things are worse today than they used to be is a lot of “back in the good old days” day dreaming.