I agree with all that you said, but the quote above jumped out at me. But it impressed me in a quantitative way.

If our tax revenues are about 18% of our GDP (plus or minus depending on the economic cycles), then for every increase in spending for something there has to be a decrease in some other spending--a decrease in spending on other things government spends on or more government borrowing resulting in a further increase in national debt.

If we simply look at the things that we know are very likely to increase--defense spending (at least for a few years), Social Security (as the population ages), Medicare/Medicaid (as those costs continue to increase), and the interest on our national debt (which is likely to grow at a rate higher than almost anything else)--we're looking at some pretty significant spending increases which are almost unavoidable.

If the premise that further increases in borrowing simply can't be sustained, that leaves only two ways that those fairly "fixed" expenses can be paid for--either "corresponding and opposite" reductions in government spending on other programs, or increases in taxes.

Surely there is some spending cuts that are possible. But would they be sufficient to pay for the almost certain increases in other areas mentioned? That calls for a stretch of one's imagination. Less on infrastructure, the space program, education, social programs, the environment, foreign aid, various research programs, public broadcasting, regulation of various things...etc.? All to pay for increased spending on defense, Social Security, Medicare, interest expense? That would amount to an "involvement" by government in our lives--but in a negative way. Government would be required to discontinue spending on things we've become to accept as basic rights.

And in the background is the quality of the services we already have, as bad as they have become. The author points out where we are after forty or so years of governance under the "old system"--our child-poverty and infant-mortality rates are the highest, our life expectancy is the lowest, our budget deficit as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) is the highest, our 15-year-olds rank among the lowest on tests of math and science, and our healthcare cost per capita is double that of other countries even though 50 million Americans have no health insurance.

So the question remains--can we both improve those factors of our everyday life (education, healthcare, poverty, infant mortality, etc.) and at the same time fund the additional spending that clearly is necessary through the use of the economic principles and tools used for the last forty years? Or will our choice become greater taxation and government involvement in our lives--the alternative being a fundamental change in our way of life with fewer and fewer government-provided services because we can no longer afford them?

I've read the article a third time and I still don't have an alternative argument with which to defeat the author's premise. The problem is one of simple arithmetic, not one of comparitive economic systems or political priciples. How can we finance the functions that we have come to expect from our government?