Why does government always expand, and how should we respond?

 The Economist suggests 3 reasons:

• Inertia and mission creep make government hard to pare back. Voters and lobbyists who benefit from a regulation or item of spending have every reason to work hard at preserving it, ...

•  The second force is a fact of life. Prices of the services welfare states provide, such as health care and education, grow faster than the economy because of their high labour intensity and low rates of productivity increase. ...

•  The third force is that governments today have more things to get done. As voters became richer over the 20th century they demanded more education and more of the expensive health care that takes advantage of the latest science. ...

...and offers some criticism of President Biden

• One task is to maximise the role of markets and individual choice. Climate change should be fought with a price for carbon, ... not by rationing flights, promoting green national champions or enlisting central banks to distort financial markets. 

•  The welfare state should focus on redistributing cash and letting those in need choose what to do with it, not setting up new bureaucracies such as President Joe Biden’s proposed federal child-care system.