The power law curve is steep at low spending and flat at high spending. For the model growth = β₀ × spending⁻ᵅ, the marginal growth gain from a cut falls as (spending)⁻⁽ᵅ⁺¹⁾. A country at 20% spending gains roughly (50/20)^(α+1) times more from the same cut than a country at 50%. With α≈1.5, that ratio is about 6×. This means France or Germany cutting 5 points of spending gains far less than Singapore at the same level. The political economy of high-spending countries is therefore trapped: the cure is real but the immediate payoff is small relative to the disruption.