Meanwhile the US life expectancy has been decreasing.
And countries with huge governments like France have been doing just fine.
Also running a similar deficit than US.
Even being libertarian, I have common sense to acknowledge that those takes are plain stupid.
It's all about how the money is spent, not if it's public or private.
I bet most money spent by the government in the US is in entitlements, not infra or any kind of subsidies to key industries. So yeah, very inefficient!
My impression of The Economist is more of "never enough taxes". The article shows some US graphs but is not US-centric. A quick search showed an equivalent article (w much more graphs) for the UK. And France "doing just fine"... is problematic - in particular ever more despairing to find places to control its government budgets.
Before the Conservatives jump all over the article, the full article has a few key caveats.
1. Spending on stuff, like infrastructure and public services, is substantially down. In the chart, the US has never spent less as a percentage of GDP providing public services.
2. Public sector employment has long been in decline.
Important dimension (also covered) is that high spending does not necessarily get things done. At least in appearance - but most likely in reality also.
On the contrary, occasionally an urgent matter (say, a bridge replacement) gets a spending push and amazement ensues that it can actually be done. i.e. cases of both high spending and fast result.
Meanwhile the US life expectancy has been decreasing.
And countries with huge governments like France have been doing just fine.
Also running a similar deficit than US.
Even being libertarian, I have common sense to acknowledge that those takes are plain stupid.
It's all about how the money is spent, not if it's public or private.
I bet most money spent by the government in the US is in entitlements, not infra or any kind of subsidies to key industries. So yeah, very inefficient!