I am arguing that people who simplistically say that government is the problem are not just simplistic but not based in reality.
Good government will yield good results, bad government will yield bad results.
The size of government that is required to get a good outcome is related to population size, density and sophistication of economic, education and health systems.
You need a lot less government in Wyoming than you do in Manhatten. Generally the people in Manhatten can accept this while generally speaking the people in Wyoming want to inflict their government onto the rest of us.
It is a reoccuring fallacy of the far right that they take arguments that have a relative truth and make it into an absolute truth, which no longer is valid.
For example President Kennedy reduced the maximum variable income tax rate from 80% and this created a rapidly expanding economy which yielded more government revenue, at the lower rates.
They have now concluded that this is absolutely true and that if you reduce taxes you will always cause enough of an economic expansion to increase government revenues at the lower rate.
If that were absolutely true in all situations then you should be able to reduce taxes all the way to 1% and see government revenues increase. Obviously that is not the case, there is an optimum point and from practical experience it seems that the sweet point was reached during the Clinton years.
By using absurd extremes to illustrate the Republican meme that government = bad and regulations = kill jobs I am showing that Republicans suffer an absolute collapse of logical discussion by taking something that might have relative truth and making it absolute, almost in a religious sense, and when you do that absurdity follows.
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