The Failure Of Keynesian Spending

I've showed this before, but it's worthwhile repeating. The chart above makes a bold and striking statement: the more the government spends, in relation to the size of the economy, the higher the rate of unemployment; and the less the government spends, the lower the rate of unemployment. That's not the same as saying that rising government spending causes the unemployment rate to rise, since it's very true that rising unemployment forces the government to spend more (e.g., for unemployment benefits and other assistance to those losing their jobs), and rising unemployment goes hand in hand with a weaker economy, and that tends to push government spending higher in relation to GDP. So I want to be careful with the causation/correlation argument here.