In my column three days ago, I expressed admiration for the fact that Denmark has been fiscally responsible for the past 10-plus years.

Earlier this month, as part of my series on the western world’s entitlement crisis and observed that Greece has moved in the wrong direction this century, but has been very prudent if you just look at the past six years.

Today, we’re going to show a country that has easily exceeded the recent achievements on Denmark and Greece.

Here’s a chart showing how modest spending restraint, maintained for past few decades, has led to a significant reduction in the burden of government spending in Taiwan.

What’s impressive isn’t that the burden of spending dropped by more than 5-percentage points of GDP.

Actually, that is impressive. What’s super impressive is that the spending burden, compared to other developed nations, was low at the start of the century (24 percent of GDP) and dropped even lower over 25 years.

Indeed, the spending burden in Taiwan, as a share of GDP, is less than half the fiscal burden in either Greece or Denmark.

Which may help to explain this next chart.

Taiwan’s policies are not perfect, of course, but there’s much to admire. Especially with regards to spending policy.

I especially like comparing Cuba and Taiwan. Cuba started the post-WWII era much richer, but is now far poorer.