I'm not making a normative claim. I'm saying that the narrative in the article — that the private sector has taken over functions of the government and the government has been in retreat — is exactly the opposite of what the statistics show.
In any case, no matter what two points of time you choose, you see the role of government in society increase, whether you want to look at government spending as a share of GDP or the compliance costs paid by corporations as a share of the revenue or the percentage of the workforce who specialize in navigating government-constructed regulations.