But I don't agree with Mr.P. that big overspending gvt (BOG) is a democratic-liberal-atheist conspiracy and overspending just a typically bad habit of only leftists. In my view it is the natural state of the throne: anyone who sits on it gets corrupted. Mildy or severely..but always.
Now BOG means big business. Any new CEO/POTUS and its red/blue management will tend to make sure that the profitability of that BOG business continues and even grows. Shielded away from free market competition this is relatively easy of course. All you need to do is sell dreams and get away with the promises you couldn't keep.
The GOP and DemP are primarily labor unions for their political workers and business affiliates, and all workers want always more... not less. Even if your ideology tells you that BOG is wrong, that it should be downsized in every way... the vested interests of any politician as well as business people who fare well by state operations and some of its regulations are simply too strong to fight effectively against. The maximum achievable is paralysis; when push comes to shove... no politician can sell a politics that tells people and businesses who are state-dependent (business monopolies sucking on state-titty via regulation is a separate interesting case) that state-titty will be removed from their mouths; nobody votes for a politician who tells them he will make their life more miserable in the short term, but with a promise that things will get much better "in a decade or so". Even if a cure by an objective standard is a real cure but needs 10 years of transitioning, sacrifices and healing... most voters wont buy it anymore. Maybe unless... politicians who want to downsize BOG lead by example once they are in power, and in front of the troops.
It occurs to me that not only BOG is a monopoly and the worst in kind, but that BOG also promotes monopolies in the free market (I'm afraid Mr.P. says told you so) in various ways. This phenomenon is often called oligarchy, but the basics are: a cancerous spread of concentrated malicious power that destroys and consumes living cells, or turns cells into slave-cells. The opposite of a free, diverse, healthy society. It is a society that suffers from cancer. BOG is a form of brain cancer... but cancers can occur anywhere in the body and be as lethal as BOG brain cancer.
Found this article about monopoly in economics and its relationship with government on a site called "Library of Economics and Liberty", worth reading:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Monopoly.htmlA monopoly is an enterprise that is the only seller of a good or service. In the absence of government intervention, a monopoly is free to set any price it chooses and will usually set the price that yields the largest possible profit. Just being a monopoly need not make an enterprise more profitable than other enterprises that face competition: the market may be so small that it barely supports one enterprise. But if the monopoly is in fact more profitable than competitive enterprises, economists expect that other entrepreneurs will enter the business to capture some of the higher returns. If enough rivals enter, their competition will drive prices down and eliminate monopoly power.
[........]