Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
it is quite elementary:

An advanced western economy, facing relative technological and demographic decline, should not be spending more than 40% of GDP lest it do serious damage to the long-term growth rate that will preserve the standard of living we enjoy for our children too:

http://ime.bg/uploads/OptimalSizeOfGovernment.pdf

If we accept that spending can fluctuate around 7%must look to spend just 33% of GDP at its peak, with a median value of no more than 36%.............. like we achieved in the nineties.

So to a degree we are going to have to get used to the idea of government doing less for us because having a public debt equivalent to 400% of GDP by 2040, and using 15% of GDP each year to service debt interest, is clearly not a happy future:

http://www.bis.org/publ/work300.pdf

so, if you cannot achieve everything you might like the state to do within a 'mere' 36% of GDP accept that it will do less, otherwise we will destroy the long-term growth that will preserve the standard of living we enjoy today for our children tomorrow.
And why should i take the word of some Bulgarian economists as final word on the issue, or a research made by an investment bank? How do you create the correlation between percentage of GDP created by government spending and public debt percentage of GDP?

For example US is a country with very low government spending, akin to 38.9% of GDP, meanwhile their debt in comparison is 102.94% of their annual GDP. Another example is Sweden with Governmental expenditure of 52.5% of GDP, while their debt in comparison is 37.44% of their GDP.

So are you suggesting that Swedes are destroying their economy compared to US?