Government Spending and GDP

We decided that we would have a soda
My favorite flavor, cherry red
I sung my song to Mr Jimmy
And he said one word to me, that was "dead"
--Rolling Stones

Dan Mitchell shares some graphs from a recent empirical study of the relationship between government spending and economic output. Various countries, regions, etc all show same thing. The higher the government spending, the lower the GDP.

R-squares, ranging from .24 to .67, are quite high considering other factors that could be at work.

Just one more brick for the Keynesian crypt.