In the UK most people have ‘white goods’ at home. Some have more than others: washing machines, tumble dryers, dishwashers, fridges, freezers, vacuum cleaners etc. We also have hard and soft furnishings in our homes: sofas, chairs, tables, carpets, windows, lights, entertainment and communication equipment etc and many have cars or other personal transport. We all have to maintain these items in some way or another; cleaning, dusting, emptying, charging, filling with suitable detergents or fuel, painting, servicing etc. We might insure ourselves against the loss of these things and if we don’t keep them ‘properly’ then they won’t last as long and we probably will have to replace them sooner than we might otherwise have done - and replacements are maintenance costs too. We might choose to buy less robust products knowing that they will need replacing sooner - and this is a maintenance cost too.

We all know this and understand it. We all spend some of our time and money maintaining ourselves and our property. The more property we have, and the higher our required standards of maintenance, the more this maintenance costs. Of course, by acquiring more products we can sometimes apparently cut the maintenance burden - but it usually just moves the cost from our time to our money. Buying and using a dishwasher rather than spending so much time at the kitchen sink; or a steam cleaner which speeds up cleaning the floor. Richer folk may even buy the services of someone to carry out much of this maintenance work on their behalf. The only way we as individuals can continue to acquire more goods and property is either by paying more or if the costs of the maintenance of our existing stuff reduces as a proportion of what we have available to spend. This reduction may be because our income goes up relative to other people’s, or because the cost of maintenance is reduced by efficiency savings (eg, a more efficient boiler ‘paying for itself’ in reduced energy consumption over 8 years or so) or because we decide to do without replacing a particular gadget or service which we perhaps rarely use.

Maintenance costs us - and the more stuff we have and the higher our standards, the more maintenance is required.

The same is true in public life. We all want our rubbish and recycling taken away (even the anti-socials who dump the remainders of their meals and the packaging outside the fast food outlets want someone to pick it up and would be disgusted if the rat-infested remains were still there at their next visit). We want safe play areas for our children. We want schools which educate the young to a standard which we accept. We want good policing so that we can visit the city centre at night and not be afraid. We want care for our elderly or infirm and war heroes. We want affordable housing. We want welfare so that those unable to work can live in dignity. We want defences against aggressors. We want regulations to control profiteering. We want roads that don’t damage our cars. We want roads that we can use to actually get somewhere in a reasonable time. We want attractive cars that go fast and don’t pollute. We want proper regulations for car manufacturers. We want public libraries. We want art and culture. We want ‘greener’ living. We want health care for everyone (not just because it’s right - but because it’s safer for us). We want courts to dispense justice (but we mean fairness). We want freedom to ‘do our thing’. We want… that someone should do something about our favourite gripe. And all of this is maintenance and adds to the costs of public life which have to be paid for by us through local or national or consumption taxes or directly through purchasing private services.

In the UK we’re already finding our maintenance costs to be a troublesome burden and we’re finding it difficult to buy new things while we’re still paying for all the stuff we have already. Our councils commission new roads to try to alleviate congestion - but that means that there are more miles of roads to maintain unless we choose to stop maintaining and/or close some other roads. We want our medical experts to start using new treatments in the NHS but they can’t afford them for everyone that might need them - unless they increase the budget or take money from some other service or stop using some treatment for some other group.

We’re a rich country and we can afford many good things for our people - but we can’t keep having more without paying more in maintenance costs.

TANSTAAFL

There are, of course, things that can be done to reduce the maintenance burden:

  • Some government services can be outsourced to companies with bigger, faster machinery or specialist skills or perhaps they just complete the job with fewer employees? Oops. Our welfare maintenance burden just increased.

    The council should do something.

  • Cut school costs; perhaps by having larger classes? But then discipline and academic standards might slip.

    OFSTED should do something.

  • Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so generous with our welfare payments - there’s dignity, and then there’s extravagance? Until you try working out what your lifestyle might be like if you were on welfare.

    The DWP should do something.

  • I know! let’s cut defence spending. But then our interests might get attacked by aggressive groups and we’ll have to spend more on rapid reaction.

    The MoD should do something.

Every time we call for someone to do something it costs us more. We either have to stump up the extra cash (value) to pay for it or accept that something else will have to go.

But surely there’s something effective we can do? Yes, there is. Reduce our expectations. Increase efficiency. What we should cut out is waste. Cut out wasted time and effort in public services. Cut out pencil-pushers who waste their own and other people’s time. Hold outsource companies to account for how they spend public money. Don’t outsource a service unless there’s a clear benefit (because we will be paying for the service, the management of that service plus the profit of the outsource company). If there is a clear benefit in outsourcing, ask searching questions about why those same benefits can’t be had from the in-house team. Instead of making regulations ever tighter and more specific with corresponding bureaucracy, make them more generic and use ‘reasonableness’ tests to see if they are effective. Don’t tolerate petty or any other sort of corruption. Increase transparency and let people democratically decide what should and should not be funded through our taxes.

If you like what a political party proposes to spend money on or to cut from public funding then vote for them at the next opportunity - don’t leave it to someone else and then bitch about the result. Realise that you can’t have something for nothing - because someone, somewhere will have to pay for it - and it might well be you.