Is “Big Government” Really the Problem?

Conservatives love to complain about “big government,” but despite spending less than many comparable countries, America is less prosperous and less free. Briahna Joy Gray explains that government isn’t bad because it’s big: it’s bad because it’s bought. Join us and make our work possible: https://www.patreon.com/gravelinstitute Institute Merch: https://gravelinstitute.org/merch Follow the Institute! Twitter: https://twitter.com/GravelInstitute Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gravelinsti… Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GravelInstit… CITATIONS In addition to federal budget data on government size and GDP, the following sources were helpful in the making of this video: 1:11: Elise Gould, “The United States Lags Peer Countries on Mobility,” Economic Policy Institute, October 2012: https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/. See also Lane Kenworthy, “Is Big Government Bad for Liberty, Civil Society, and Happiness?” in Evonomics Magazine, November 2017: https://evonomics.com/big-government-bad-freedom-civil-society-happiness/. 2:39 PM: Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (2014): https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf. The Gilens-Page study is controversial: the critics’ main argument is that by ignoring issues on which the rich and the “middle class” disagree, the “middle class” wins about half the time. For a summary of the rebuttals, see Dylan Mathews, “Remember That Study That Said America Is an Oligarchy?” 3 Rebuttals Say It’s Wrong” from Vox, May 2016: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/ study-on-the-oligarchy-of-Gilens-page. For a response from Gilens and Page, see Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, “Critics have argued with our analysis of political inequality in the United States. Here are 5 ways they are wrong,” in the Washington Post, May 2016: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/23/critics-challenge-our-portrait-of-americas-political-inequality-heres-5-ways-they-are-wrong/. It should be noted that neither Gilens and Page nor their critics argue that the poor have a voice in American politics. 4:06 p.m.: Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice (2019). For a simple summary, see David Leonhardt, “The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You,” The New York Times, October 2019. 4:29 p.m.: Drew DeSilver, “For Most American Workers, Real Wages Have Barely Budged for Decades,” Pew Research Center, August 2018: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ . 4:43 p.m.: Matt Bruenig, “Top 1% Up $21 Trillion.” Bottom 50% Down $900 Billion,” from the People’s Policy Project, June 2019: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/06/14/top-1-up-21-billion-bottom-50-down-900-billion/.

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