Sadly it kind of does. It's surprising just how many governments have followed the same pattern.

First they grow and grow and grow. Reform is occasional and minor (at best), eventually they get so big and bad that a crisis forces real change.

The state is then transformed into a lean mean productive machine. Which starts to grow slowly and the process repeats.

Of the top of my head I can think of Sweden, where a crisis forced massive reform and now it's almost ready for a crisis again.

And Great Britain in the 1970, crisis -> Thatcher -> prosperity -> growing government -> less prosperity -> coming crisis.

Guess where the US is in that cycle.

Interesting to see how that follows the cost of a barrel of crude oil.. roughly

Reminds me of a quote by Thomas Jefferson...something about the tree of liberty :-)