More and More Government

Patrick Chisholm, writing in the Christian Science Monitor this week, picks up on a theme that I've been pushing for some time now: that the era of big government is not only far from over, but the size and authority of the federal government continues to expand at a rapid pace. Of course, as Chisholm notes, most of this big scary federal establishment is simply engaged in the process of taking money from one group of Americans and issuing checks to others:

In the early 1960s, transfer payments (entitlements and welfare) constituted less than a third of the federal government's budget. Now they constitute almost 60 percent of the budget, or about $1.4 trillion per year. Measured according to this, the US government's main function now is redistribution: taking money from one segment of the population and giving it to another segment. In a few decades, transfer payments are expected to make up more than 75 percent of federal government spending.