NightFox
Wildling
Government hasn't grown at all when considered with the gdp of the United states..
You are of course aware that government spending on final goods and services is INCLUDED in the GDP calculation, right?
GDP = Consumption (C) +Investment(I) + Government Spending (G) + Net exports (NX)
So the proper comparison is the government spending SHARE of GDP and that has grown steadily over the last 80 odd years at an average annual rate of around 0.24%, in other words government spending has grown faster than the rest of the economy combined over an 80 odd year period.
One of the biggest problems is government spends a lot of money on economically useless or even worse counter productive pursuits, that is expenditures that either do not add to the nations capital stock or actually inhibit capital accumulation thus impairing future economic growth. Another problem is the fact that government is rife with inefficiency and graft since it remains largely unaccountable to anyone but itself when it comes to spending, this makes mis-allocation of resources a consistent drag on productive pursuits and the larger the government gets the bigger and more severe the problem gets.
I've seen credible studies that argue that if the regulatory regime and government spending as a share of GDP had remained static since the mid 1950's the current Real GDP would be almost 4 times what it is today, perhaps you can let your imagination fill in the blanks as to the positive welfare effects on the U.S. society of an economy 4 times it's current size and then thank government for the fact that you can only imagine it.