Local Government and the Consumer

Abstract

Those who argue about local government spending are divided, like the ranks of Tuscany faced with Horatius on the bridge, into those at the back crying ‘forward’ and those at the front shouting ‘back’. Currently, the latter, spurred on by the government and the state of the economy, seem to be in the ascendant, and there are cuts in expenditure, talk of cuts to come, and talk of services which should no longer be a cost on the public purse. The consumers of local government, in both their user and ratepayer roles, might well be bewildered by the discussions, which focus largely on the resources available for the services and less on the demand for such services, let alone whether they are effective. In the heady days of the sixties the amount of money spent on local government increased, and, for instance, the number of employed by local government sprang from 1,755,000 in 1961 to 2,697,000 in 1974 (a 54 per cent increase). We were never clearly told what standards we were trying to achieve, nor, when the hatchet falls, are we clearly told how standards will suffer. Spend is good; cut is bad: it is the philosophy of input, rather than that of the consequences of input. It is apparent that fiscal levers are operational in both cases: the belief was then that it suited the economy to indulge in public expenditure; the belief is now that it suits the economy to indulge in the opposite.