5 Stupid things about Ayn Rand

[5thHorseman]

When people generally talk about the "size of the government" they don't mean the number of people that are hired by them, but rather the amount of power those people have, and the government in general has. Any government that has to govern over 300 million people will obviously be large, but it's whether they continually give themselves more power that is important.

Any sources for which parties increase the power of government? I saw an interesting graph earlier today which showed that Democrats more often raise the debt ceiling than Republicans.

This one is on public sector employment, but it's not the one I was thinking of, although it is similar. Cannot find the other one.

But if you break down the numbers, you will see that federal employment has increased by just 16,000 under Mr Obama, hardly a socialist transformation (and not much of a Keynesian stimulus either). Over his two terms, George W. Bush added 37,000 federal jobs; Ronald Reagan added 197,000 federal jobs in his two. Bill Clinton lost 139,000! Federal employment is some 350,000 down from when Reagan left office.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwoo...mic-policy


I'll try find the other article, it's more damning of Reagan, as this one is only the first 4 years, and after the start, just like his original tax cuts, the employment of public workers goes up.