A straw man attack that starts with a sexual slur against the author's enemies fails to impress.

It would be a lot more productive to e.g. look at the general Tea Party theme, which is smaller government. If the Federal, state and local governments try to do less, there will be more money for the essentials and the entitlement promises (and the latter have to be adjusted, no feasible tax increases will cover their current projected expenses and the status quo will soon devour the "discretionary" budget; heck, Social Security is about to go into a deficit).

US government spending reached 45% of GDP as of last year: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.ht...

It peaked at 52% in 1945 (WWII). Just how much of the country's wealth does the author think our governments (Federal, state and local) can consume?

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cf... has an interesting chart too, covering just the past decade or so but comparing a few developed countries.

The Economist uses OECD data, which comes in somewhat lower than the data cited by the parent. I would be interested in knowing the reason for the difference between these numbers.

The difference is only three percentage points, and we're very close to the end of 2009, so it probably is based on different estimates of 2009 GDP.

It'll be spring or nearly so before we have solid 2009 GDP figures, if I remember the various data reporting lags correctly.