New Fox News piece: Our Bloated Goverment Is Already Much, Much Bigger Than You Think

My new Fox News piece starts this way:

How much money does it take for governments of sovereign nations to do their job? Different countries obviously have different answers. Countries run by social democratic or socialist parties will spend lavishly on cradle-to-grave social systems. On the other hand, citizens in non-socialist countries have more choice over how to spend their money. When Americans think of countries with really big governments, they probably think of Sweden or France or Finland. Most of Europe is thought to have much larger governments than the United States.

Unfortunately, this isn't true any more. Even after adjusting for differences in the cost of living and taking into account how many people live in the country, total U.S. government spending -- at all levels of government -- accounts for more real resources per capita than 95 percent of the countries in the world. In fact, 166 out of 175 countries have governments that spend less money than the United States [click here for Table 1]. Our government spends 276 percent more than is spent by the average government of another country around the world. That comes out to about $17,400 per person living in the United States -- almost $70,000 for a family of four. . . .