As Daniel J. Mitchell, Ph.D., of The Heritage Foundation wrote back in the Dark Ages of 2005, managed by the Statist G.W. Bush and the Republicrats, the US needs to drastically reduce its level of government destruction and appropriation of money. Six years later, the situation is now twice as bad. As Mitchell wrote, the deficit is not the critical variable. The important factor is the overall size of government and how much of GDP it consumes. Deficits arise due to the size of mandatory spending programs and the burden of government, its workers, its pensions and its payoffs to various clients. Taxes and deficits are both extremely harmful of course, but the longer-term issue is the obvious fact that big government expropriates money from the private sector and dispenses it in ways that are often counterproductive. In other words we would still need to reduce spending even if the federal government was operating on a surplus which in the US, is something that will not happen in the next 5 or even 10 years.

“For most of America's history, the aggregate burden of government was below 10 percent of GDP.^[38] This level of government was consistent with the beliefs of the America's founders. As the IMF has explained, "classical economists and political philosophers generally advocated the minimal state-they saw the government's role as limited to national defense, police, and administration."^[39] America's policy of limited government certainly was conducive to economic expansion. In the days before income tax and excessive government, America moved from agricultural poverty to middle-class prosperity.

Reducing government to 10 percent of GDP might be a very optimistic target, but shrinking the size of government should be a major goal for policymakers. The economy certainly would perform better, and this would boost prosperity and make America more competitive.”

Even the pro-Government IMF confirms the obvious:

As the international economy becomes more competitive, and as capital and labor become more mobile, countries with big and especially inefficient governments risk falling behind in terms of growth and welfare. When voters and industries realize the long-term benefits of reform in such an environment, they and their representatives may push their governments toward reform. In these circumstances, policymakers find it easier to overcome the resistance of special-interest groups.^[37]

Government needs to be cut in half. Independent audits would likely confirm that at least 33% of all government spend is corrupted, wasted or misspent. The Socialized US health care programs of Medicaid and Medicare waste about $150 billion or more in monies each year. The Pentagon has 11.000 or more workers at its HQ in Washington, a staffing level that should be reduced by 80%. Infrastructure projects should at the very least be privately managed in cooperation at some level with the state. Social security will need to be privatized and reformed – an inevitability that politicians will simply ignore until the system collapses in bankruptcy.

Socialism is premised on many evils, but the most absurd is the idea that a good or service is either 'free' or a 'right'. They are neither. Once you obstruct competition and price points from a market, its collapse is certain. Even if we ignore it, this fact will not simply go away.