[matteotom]

What metric are you looking at when you say "the size of government has vastly and consistently outgrown the private sector" - AFAICT, excluding 2020 and 2021 (which I think is reasonable), the federal budget has been between 17% and 25% of GDP for the past 50 years (where the fluctuations are more a function of variable GDP).

The number of federal government employees has also remained mostly flat for the past 50 years (and IIRC most growth in overall public sector employment comes from schools).

[mondrian]

Comparing it to GDP doesn’t seem to make sense. Maybe to government revenue.

[AnimalMuppet]

No, the claim was that it has outgrown the private sector. GDP is in fact a good proxy for that claim.

Outgrowing government revenue is a different claim.

[neffy]

No, it does make sense. Most of the purported growth in government spending is just using raw figures, and not correcting for either inflation or monetary expansion. It is a convenient mistake.