That's a universal counter-argument. When applied consistently, it leads to solipsism, Kantian things-in-themselves, and all of that metaphysical stuff. Those things are nice to remember, but hardly of any practical use.
Is there any data which is as straightforward as this, and can be considered pro-government, in some interpretation?
An there is plenty to say for government. This whole world society is intertwined with governance. We would be incapable of organizing on such a large scale and you propably would not have had a computer to write this on if there were no people getting together on a bigger scale.
So the problem cannot simply be defined in pro vs anti government terms.
I'm just saying the graph is pretty useless in showing that large government spending is the cause of less annual economic growth. It just does not contain that information.
It leaves out all the dynamics that produced these results.
For one, in general you can clearly see that most countries that have the largest spending also have the most complex and developed societies. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending)
The countries that have little government spending per gdp are usually poor coutries.
The truth is that there is a saturation limit because cool societies is increasingly expensive.
The economic growth potential of underdeveloped countries is simply far greater than that of well developed countries.
And what you also can clearly see is that there are a lot of exceptions. In general, tho, big government spending means expensice society.
And expensive societies means there is a limit on growth.
Sure, society can produce evermore fantastic products for me to buy but i can only spend my money once.
If i have food and games and security i'm kindof happy and don't feel the need to make my economic situation any better.
So naturally, in a society where the government spends a lot of money on society (so people have it better) the economic growth will become less and should eventually stop.
Meanwhile the graph doesn't consider basic stuff like