The industry output tables I mentioned do not measure "spending" per se, they measure value-add, that is, spending minus purchases of other sectors, so private sector should be netted out.
Conceptually, say you have a government service -- DMV. You have to pay for the building, you pay salaries, you buy equipment, etc. Now the government doesn't make its own pens or computers and it doesn't have its own electricians to service the DMV, it pays for goods and services from the private sector. So you would want to subtract out what it buys from the private sector, which is exactly what the value-add definition for the government sector does. This is to avoid double counting, since these add up to GDP and you want the sales of the computer maker to not be counted twice when you add up the value add of all indutstries to get GDP. Think of this also as the definition of a VAT - value added tax - it's computed as sales net of purchases. Except for government, it would be the budget net of purchases from the private sector, the residual being inferred as "government production". I am not sure how else to objectively measure government production, seeing as how that includes things like social workers, building inspectors, etc.
Therefore I think the data I cited is consistent with your definition, except that it is goods and services (most of what the government produces is services such as education and police, not goods, like roads).
But if you want to look at fixed assets (e.g. the DMV building itself, or the school building), then there is a different BEA table to look at, namely this one here:
With fixed assets, you have to decide how to value them -- at current cost, historical cost, or real cost -- discussed here: https://www.bea.gov/system/files/methodologies/Fixed-Assets-.... This boils down to valuing that old computer at the DMV based on what it cost to buy deflated by some percentage based on estimated service life or how much you could sell it for today on the open market.
Using current cost accounting, in 1980 government fixed assets were 2.4 Trillion in 1980 and 16.1 Trillion in 2021, or a growth rate of 671% (a CAGR of 4.9%).
Whereas looking at private sector fixed assets also at current cost, we see it went from 7.1 Trillion in 1980 to 51.7 Trillion in 2020, or an increase of 728% (CAGR of 5.0%)
So it is true that private sector fixed assets increased 0.1% faster than government sector fixed assets over that 40 year period, but that certainly doesn't seem like evidence of mass privatization. This is true even if some things were privatized. E.g. maybe we started contracting with more private prisons but also added 20 new public universities in that period, so the net "privatization" was small.
Conceptually, say you have a government service -- DMV. You have to pay for the building, you pay salaries, you buy equipment, etc. Now the government doesn't make its own pens or computers and it doesn't have its own electricians to service the DMV, it pays for goods and services from the private sector. So you would want to subtract out what it buys from the private sector, which is exactly what the value-add definition for the government sector does. This is to avoid double counting, since these add up to GDP and you want the sales of the computer maker to not be counted twice when you add up the value add of all indutstries to get GDP. Think of this also as the definition of a VAT - value added tax - it's computed as sales net of purchases. Except for government, it would be the budget net of purchases from the private sector, the residual being inferred as "government production". I am not sure how else to objectively measure government production, seeing as how that includes things like social workers, building inspectors, etc.
Therefore I think the data I cited is consistent with your definition, except that it is goods and services (most of what the government produces is services such as education and police, not goods, like roads).
But if you want to look at fixed assets (e.g. the DMV building itself, or the school building), then there is a different BEA table to look at, namely this one here:
https://www.bea.gov/data/government/fixed-assets#:~:text=Wha....
With fixed assets, you have to decide how to value them -- at current cost, historical cost, or real cost -- discussed here: https://www.bea.gov/system/files/methodologies/Fixed-Assets-.... This boils down to valuing that old computer at the DMV based on what it cost to buy deflated by some percentage based on estimated service life or how much you could sell it for today on the open market.
Check out the asset tables: https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=10&step=2
Using current cost accounting, in 1980 government fixed assets were 2.4 Trillion in 1980 and 16.1 Trillion in 2021, or a growth rate of 671% (a CAGR of 4.9%).
Whereas looking at private sector fixed assets also at current cost, we see it went from 7.1 Trillion in 1980 to 51.7 Trillion in 2020, or an increase of 728% (CAGR of 5.0%)
So it is true that private sector fixed assets increased 0.1% faster than government sector fixed assets over that 40 year period, but that certainly doesn't seem like evidence of mass privatization. This is true even if some things were privatized. E.g. maybe we started contracting with more private prisons but also added 20 new public universities in that period, so the net "privatization" was small.