London is full of hateful little rags. Today's example is "City AM", a wafer thin bit of journalism handed out for free on the streets to disinterest 'City Boys' and me when I'm too asleep to realise what's going on.
Yesterday's had an article about the "Low productivity public sector" and its effect on the economy.
To back-pedal a little, the normal model f productivity is value added by a company, which typically manifests as its profits. Lots of companies making profits means a larger economy.
But to talk about the public sector in this way utterly misses the point. In the public sector you are given a budget in order to achieve a task, be it running a library, curing sick people, or stopping people from mugging old ladies. If you can do this on less than you're given then that's OK, but it tends to beg the question, why not do more. Instead of having one library, how about opening another?
At no point does the term 'profit' ever enter into the equation. The closest the public sector can ever come to this, and by extension 'increased productivity' is by reducing its budget.
If you look at the public sector through the filter of private sector economics then the only conclusion is to do away with it entirely; and in doing so dismiss the very idea of a compassionate society wherein you are something beyond the money you possess/can generate/can be persuaded to part with.
No comments:
Post a Comment