Whither the Welfare State: Public versus Private Consumption?

Ben Fine ()
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Ben Fine: Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK

No 92, Working Papers from Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK

Abstract: This paper is an attempt to settle a debt, or at least pay some interest on a debt, that was left unpaid in the closing chapter of my first major effort to address consumption in The World of Consumption, Fine and Leopold (1993). There, with a strong tinge of guilt, it was recognised that the book had conformed to an overwhelming feature of the explosively growing literature on consumption that had just been critically assessed - its almost exclusive pre-occupation with private consumption as realised through the purchase of commodities. This represented a double omission; for, not only does it neglect public consumption, it also leaves unchallenged, the notion attached to laissez-faire ideology, that public consumption is merely an alternative form of private consumption, and liable to be inferior in efficiency and quality of delivery. Even those rejecting the presumed inferiority of public provision, on efficiency and/or equity grounds have been subject to an assault of making the public more like, or meeting the standards of, the private sector, with the practices and terminology of the latter being aped as public consumption is attached to commercial criteria and the serving of clients and customers, etc.

Pages: 28 pages
Date: 1999
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