Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 293 of Robert Higgs’s 1999 essay – “The Era of Big Government Is Not Over” – in The Good Society, as this essay is reprinted in the excellent 2004 collection of some of Bob’s essays, Against Leviathan (footnote deleted, link added):

So long as the prevailing ideology imposes no general (that is, constitutional-level) constraint on the size, scope, and power of government, then the continued growth of government will flow naturally from the workings of the present political system, as public-choice analysts have made sufficiently clear. Concentrated benefits and dispersed costs for projects championed by special interests; real and trumped up emergencies; scheming, self-serving, strategically situated bureaucracies; and paternalistic projects seemingly without end – all nourish the government’s addition of muscle and fat.