Federal Spending

From 1879-1888, federal expenditures averaged $270 million/yr [1], and GNP averaged $11.2 billion/yr [2]--providing an estimate of federal spending at 2.4% of GNP.

In 1929, federal expenditures were $2.9 billion [3] and GDP was $104.6 billion [4]--providing an estimate of federal spending at 2.8% of GDP.

For a half-century, it seems that peacetime federal spending remained below 3% of GNP/GDP--though federal spending is currently almost 8 times larger than this long-run trend (currently over 21% of GDP).

Do we really want or need a government which is 8 times more top-heavy than before? Such an arbitrary concentration of power could lead to an entrenched bureaucracy--a "deep state" technocracy--serving its own oligarchical needs rather than serving the public.

History shows that things don't ever work out when power gets concentrated that much.

Those wielding the arbitrary power invariably use it to improve the lives of themselves and of another 5-10% of the population (the "insiders"), at the expense of the other 90-95% of the population--who begin to grow more poor over time.

Indeed, due to limits on the concentration of knowledge, elite panels of bureaucrats cannot ever know how to wield arbitrarily-concentrated power in order to help any more than about 10-15% of any given population (and always at the expense of the rest).

You just can't get better numbers than that from central planning (it never works out any better).

Reference

[1] National Bureau of Economic Research, Federal Budget Expenditures, Total for United States [M1505AUSM144NNBR], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1505AUSM144NNBR

[2] Brady, Dorothy S. (Ed.). (1966). Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800. New York : National Bureau of Economic Research. ISBN: 0-870-14186-4. Page 26 (Table A-1). http://www.nber.org/chapters/c1565

[3] U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal Government Current Expenditures [AFEXPND], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AFEXPND

[4] U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Gross Domestic Product [GDPA], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPA