Interesting points you make, Bobert. I don't for a minute believe that the conservatives are truly against "big government"! Quite the contrary. What they are in favor of is a very big government that is really a consortium of very wealthy private entities who work together to share the spoils and who effectively ARE the government. Their employees aren't on government payroll, but the companies themselves are sustained by government-arranged contracts and that's where the public money goes. Government by corporate monopoly in other words. That is a different form of government, and it pretends it isn't big government, but it is. Bush spent massively when he was in office, and it went to the benefit of people like Haliburton and Blackwater and many other such companies who landed lucrative contracts from the government. The corporates control legislation through their money, their connections, and their lobbyists. They have Congress in their pocket. That's a government by corporate oligarchy.

I think what most damaged your society was the period of de-regulation that was brought in by Ronald Reagan. In the short term, it resulted in rapid growth (due to much easy money being made available by lending institutions). In the long term, it bankrupted the entire society, because the money wasn't real. The banks created it out of thin air (by making loans), and we are now paying the price for that. It was a giant pyramid scheme, and it has gone bust as all pyramid schemes eventually do.