My colleague David Brooks tells us that Republicans see the economic crisis as showing that the welfare state is in its “death throes”. And it’s true — that is what they think, or claim to think.

And I understand why that’s what they want to think. But the fact that they think this is a testimony to the ability of people to see what they want to see, in the teeth of the evidence.

I mean, how do we measure the size of the welfare state? It’s not a perfect measure, but the OECD calculation of the share of government social expenditure in GDP (pdf) is a reasonable proxy. Here’s what it looks like for selected European countries:

If you look at these data and see them as evidence of the welfare state in its death throes, well, you’re saying a lot about yourself and nothing about reality.