I do like the quote a friend of mine pointed out with regards to the current size of public services: http://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?......we, the largest, most prosperous nation in human history, have built a government so expensive and so massive, that not even the richest country in the history of the world can afford it...
- ... we ... have built a government so expensive and so massive ...
I'm afraid I couldn't make it all the way through that press release, so I can't tell what the senator is comparing the U.S. government to when he claims it's unusually expensive and massive. According to the CIA World Factbook, our federal expenditures per capita is 40th among countries, and our federal spending per $GDP ranks 153rd. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_bud_exp_pergdp-economy...
But I suppose we're straying away from the spirit of the original article, and I'm not really a trained economist, so my ability to make useful sense of that information is fairly limited. :)