The data you point to shows government spending as a share of GDP peaking in FY 2009, dropping through FY 2014, rising slighting to FY 2016, and with a projected sharp bend upward beginning in FY 2018.

The only recent period of a significant runup in government spending (federal or overall) as a percent of GDP was approximately the second term of the most recent Bush Administration, and the only periods with any sustained growth in that measure since the 1970s are about from the middle of the Carter Administration through Reagan's first term and then again both terms of the second Bush Administration (as noted, with a particularly rapid rise in the second term.) Even with the projected increase in the out years, the projected 2020 spending level as a percent GDP isn't that much ahead of 1970.

The growth from 30 to 35% 1970 to present is enormous. People often point to the 1950's as the good old economic days, and the percentage was much lower then, as well.

More important than that, though, is that the USA was one of the few highly industrialized nations in the world which did not have its factories bombed out less than a decade before.

Umm US Gov spending was 30% GDP in 2000, bushes wars and a recession bumped it to 35% but that's hardly a run up.

I think the government's interference in the markets for housing, capital and labor are a much bigger problem than how much government consumes.

Bubbles happen because borrowing money is subsidized. Unemployment is caused when interference with prices prevent supply and demand from equalizing.

Government may waste capital, but I can point to many things that do.

I think you can increase taxes if you free markets enough and the economy could still grow.

You could GIVE everybody the downpayment for their first house and have a healthy housing market as long as you got rid of all the other subsidies and inducements and tax write-offs. Not proposing that, but you get the idea.

Which has pretty much leveled out since the end of the 1970s according to those charts?

You mean decreasing share, right?

I like how the charts run to 2020 to hide the massive ramp up in the last few years.

> I like how the charts run to 2020 to hide the massive ramp up in the last few years.

From the data there, spending as a share of GDP peaked in FY 2009, bottomed in FY 2014, and rose slightly from that trough through FY 2016. Extending it to the projected FY 2020 levels provides a bigger ramp up than recent years, since the 2018-2020 ramp up is the fastest one since the FY 2009 peak.

The only massive ramp up in recent years was the one leading up to the 2009 peak.

I don't particularly 'like' it, but entitlements will grow at an increasing pace as more of the baby boomers reach Social Security elidgibility.