Call it Unpopular Opinion #278.

 "Small government" has been the mantra that has put the last thirty years worth of Republicans in power, during which the government has not gotten notably smaller.  In fact, it keeps getting bigger and more incompetent and more expensive.    We have been promised smaller government since Reagan, and surely by now it's time for us to realize we were being lied to about that.  Among other things.

Yet no one questions that "small government" dogma.  It has gotten so bad that Democrats have to spend a lot of time insisting that they, too, are for smaller government and a balanced budget, when in fact they should be pointing out that most of the Republicans weren't in the first place.  They just talk big.  Or small, as the case may be.

The convoluted screw-ups of the Federal government are beyond me at the moment.   Let me just point out that "small government" is not all it's cracked up to be, using a rubric I like to call the Road Sign/Road Kill Ratio.

 It's very simple.   Drive on a state highway in a rural part of your state and count the number of road signs that tell you where you are, what direction you are going, how far the next town is, and where the next turn is, in a twenty-mile stretch.   Then count the number of dead animals by the side of the road.   Divide the second number by the first and this will give you your state's Road Sign/Road Kill Ratio.

If the number you get is well below 1, then you are in a state that believes in spending enough money on road signs to get people where they are going, and takes enough thought for public health that they pay someone to remove dead deer carcasses and unfortunate possums and house pets from beside the road.   The closer this number  is to 1 (that is, a 1:1 ratio of road signs to road kill), the less these rather basic items feature in your state's budget.    Your local government feels that if you don't already know where you are going, you shouldn't be here, and also that God provided buzzards and coyotes for a reason.  

If your Road Sign/Road Kill Ratio is over 1, then you live in Texas.  

 In Texas, they don't believe in "Junction" signs.   This means that if you approach your turnoff at 55 mph, you will miss it and have to turn around and go back.   There are also many, many dead armadillos.  In South Carolina, they merely don't believe in putting "North," "South," "East," or "West" on state route signs.   You are expected to steer by the stars, I suppose.

 Mind you, a high ratio doesn't mean that your state is frugal and your government is small.   It just means that they want to look small.   They are pinching pennies on some basic common-sense items so they can talk about lowering taxes and maybe actually lower them incrementally thereby cutting state revenues, but still have plenty of money for handing out pork to all their buddies.   Make no mistake, the pork barrells still will roll.   As a resident, it might behoove you to find out where the money for road signs and paying the guy who picks up dead animals off the side of the road is going instead.

 I will leave the application of this principle to the Federal government as an exercise for the reader.