But there was a lingering problem we had with the argument on civilian government spending. If the past three decades have been ones of retrenchment for labor and the left, growing inequality, increased power of capital over the government, and massive and successful attacks on government programs that serve the poor and working class, how could civilian government spending as a percentage of GDP have remained stable at around 14 percent? Should it not have declined? A good part of the seeming paradox is explained by other sources of spending with very strong political backing such as various subsidies going to agriculture, highways, and business, and the need to maintain at least the basic services and workings of civilian government. While much of civilian government spending as a percentage of GDP has been constrained over the past thirty plus years — especially social services — other areas that benefit the ruling order directly have increased.
One area in particular that has been on the receiving end of ever increasing public funds has been police, courts, prisons, and jails — what is euphemistically termed “public order and safety.” As chart 2 demonstrates, the share of such penal state spending has nearly doubled as a percentage of civilian government spending over the past fifty years and now stands at 15 percent of the latter. Because total civilian government spending stayed pretty constant as a portion of GDP, this sharp increase in penal state spending has had the effect of crowding out other forms of civilian government spending.