Well, the Guardian didn’t want to let my last “controversial” piece for them stand on its own. They asked Michael Burke to respond, which he did – with, unsurprisingly, a defence of the implied ‘positive liberties’ that come from the huge redistribution of wealth by the State.
Quotifying:
Cutting taxes while cutting services only increases the freedoms of the rich. Freedom from unemployment, ill-health, illiteracy and low educational attainment are the liberties that are paid for by a strong public sector and progressive taxation system.
Phew, where to begin?
Okay: Freedom ‘from’ unemployment is an obligation and a duty on someone else to provide a job, whether or not the individual can do any work that’s actually worth doing. The Government doesn’t actually provide ‘Freedom from unemployment’ except to a chosen few whom it recruits into its own ranks, which makes it rather too arbitrary to be considered a true ‘freedom’.
Freedom ‘from’ ill-health is an obligation on others to pay for health care, and while there’s great merit in the ‘free at the point of use’ model from the point of view of consumers of health services – paying for your health care over the course of your life, not when you need it – I disagree with Michael that running the NHS as a monolithic, heavily unionised non-profit organisation under political control guarantees the most efficient or best health care for patients. We still have some of the worst cancer survival rates in Europe, for example.
Freedom ‘from’ illiteracy is an obligation on others to pay for schooling, but sadly this particular ‘freedom’ is not one enjoyed by all:
The number of children achieving the expected levels for writing at age eleven increased from 54% to 67% in 2006, but this figure plateaued and remained the same (67%) three years later in 2009 [Source: The Literacy Trust]
Crucially, only 86% of children reach the required level of reading ability to follow the lessons at secondary schooling. So much for the freedom from illiteracy, and subsequent freedom from ‘low educational attainment’.
The point I’m making here is that implied in Michael’s argument is the assumption that these public services deliver what’s promised without any negative consequences at all, that it does, in fact, deliver us from these various ills and problems with the only true sufferers being ‘the wealthy’ whom we are supposed to regard as sub-human anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
He’s also being a bit slippery by referring to “cutting taxes while cutting services”. Cutting services, literally, would be to say “the Government will stop doing X, saving Y”. Cutting the amount of funding for services, on the other hand, implies “The Government will continue doing X, but do it for Y”. They are not the same thing.
If Michael wishes to make a case for public services in the cause of freedom, that’s fair enough, but it is wrong to argue that cutting taxes is entirely pointless for everyone except the wealthy, as if ‘the wealthy’ (in which he includes anyone ‘not poor’) are somehow not relevant to the economy, that money in private hands is somehow lost to the ‘real’ economy. It’s simply ignoring the opportunity costs of State spending, focusing only on what the State might lose if they don’t do it without paying attention to what the private sector – or individuals – lose if they do.
It makes the assumption that private sector industry and commerce will happen no matter what burdens are placed upon it, or that actually such things do not matter at all anyway. That strikes me a dangerous assumption to make, to prioritise these positive liberties at the expense of strangling the ‘golden goose’ that really pays for the whole thing.
The amount of spending by the Government has increased by 54% since 1997, while services have not become magically half as good again as what they were. Increased State spending has only one absolutely certain outcome – increased taxation. Services may improve or worsen. Your milage may vary.
Valuing public services is not an argument that legitimately justifies the current level of taxation and spending, or the repressive controls on the economy and on individual economic activity.
I’ve not covered the ‘how it’s paid for’ bit in this post – that’s for another time. Argue the merits of positive liberties if you so desire, but don’t expect people to believe that there’s no price to be paid.
