Larry Summers knows better. In a column for the Washington Post (which ran Monday in The Japan Times under the headline "The unlikely chance of shrinking government"), the Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama shows why the federal government is destined to expand, regardless of what Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney or a re-elected Obama suggests.
So far, so good. But Summers doesn't say what should be done about this. His silence is an instructive example of a larger problem: our "public intellectuals" — opinion makers — often censor themselves to advance their ambitions.
Since 1970, federal spending has averaged about 21 percent of the economy (gross domestic product). Summers lists three pressures that will make it grow: