Whatever the ideal level of government may be, the political and economic developments of the past year have made clear that in many societies, particularly among the more developed countries, the limits of appropriate or tolerable government spending may have been reached or even surpassed. … Countries that reduced government spending had economic growth rates almost two percentage points higher in 2009 than countries whose government spending scores worsened, and countries with the highest rates of government spending had gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates 4.5 percentage points lower on average than countries where government spending was best contained.
