Notes on the Front

It’s now official.  Public sector workers don’t count.  That’s the conclusion of the Irish Times’ Marc Coleman:

• The fact is that the business community is the taxpayer. In contrast to the public sector, it not only creates sustainable employment, but contributes virtually the entire tax take (public sector taxpayers don’t count because their wages and salaries are funded from taxes in the first place).

This is real Tarzan economics, the chest thumping school of ‘Private sector good, Public sector bad’.  It relies on the willing suppression of basic-101 facts, lopping off entire limbs of reality to squeeze the body on to some ideological procrustean bed.  Let’s put this thesis to the test by looking at issues regarding the enhancement of factors of production.

Take education.  Obviously, we need knowledgeable, fully-rounded production inputs (i.e. workers) to propel the wheels of enterprise.  So who shapes these inputs?  Teachers – at all levels.  Sean Lemass realised this necessity when he introduced free secondary education back in the 1960s – you can’t have a prosperous economy without universal education.  Even at third-level, teaching students business studies, marketing, accountancy – never mind all the other subjects that employers need; the educators and the administrative support staff that make these institutions thrive provide value-added to inputs in the market-place.  But for Mr. Coleman, they don’t count.

Or health.  You don’t want your production inputs breaking down, therefore a fully developed maintenance and repair system is needed (i.e. a health service).  They ensure that the production units can return to full operation status in order to maximise value-added in the economy.  Whether, of a preventative, maintenance or repair nature, the operators of this service maintain the performance of the production process; the health professionals, the porters and cleaners, the back-line staff, the secretaries in the GP clinics.  But Mr. Coleman insists they don’t count.

What about Guards?  Don’t they protect the assets of the productive process in the economy?  In their absence, extra costs would accrue to the owners of capital in the form of private security, or increased insurance premiums.  What is noteworthy here is that public security – the Gardai – doesn’t count in Mr. Coleman’s worldview.  But private security guards do.  Yet, the latter would impose greater costs on individual enterprises, reducing profit, employment and resources for R&D and development. 

It gets even weirder.  Since Mr. Coleman’s litmus test is whether ‘wages and salaries are funded from taxes’, what about the vast sections of the ‘private’ sector who work on public contracts – supplying goods and services to varying levels of public agencies?  To the extent that their wages, salaries, turnover, profits, etc. are derived from tax monies, according to Mr. Coleman, they don’t count.  So its not only the entire public sector that is immaterial, now considerable sections of the private sector don’t count.

To give this one more turn of the screw – what of all the enterprises supported by tax monies?  Grants and advice and tax breaks and in-kind subsidies – through Enterprise Ireland, the IDA, FAS and all the boards whose purpose is to support and expand business activity; well, according to Mr. Coleman, the extent to which those start-ups and growth are sourced and developed from tax monies – they don’t count.

You get the point.  In a modern, complex society incorporating liberal, pluralist economies the inter-penetration of the public and private is so profound and extensive that to draw a line and state this is ‘private’ and this is ‘public’ is, at best, an unsatisfactory short-hand.  And to set them up in opposition can only lead to a calamitous myopia of policy commentary (never mind bad policies).

Is it really being suggested that enterprise can function without the services mentioned above (and more, much more)?  If not, then they are an integral part of the enterprise process itself – thus,an integral part of the production process, providing wealth and value-added.  If you doubt this, consider the cost to individual enterprises of educating their employees, providing full health cover, security services; the full cost of roads, public transport (production units must get from A to B somehow), ports and airports, energy and telecommunications, etc. 

To accept the reality of liberal, pluralist markets (i.e. the mixed economy) is not a Left or Right thing.  You can still be gung-ho IBEC when it comes to public spending, wages, etc. But read their submissions – they are fully wedded to the mixed economy and continually make demands on public resources to support enterprise development … and rightfully so.  Because without taxes and without public spending there is no private sector – not one appropriate for a modern competitive economy.  That is the reality that Mr. Coleman denies or dismisses or just plain ignores (to be fair, he’s not the only one but given his prominence in the Irish Times, he’s one of the more prolific).

This begs a question for public sector employees:  how to counter this ideology.  Its not enough to ignore it and rely on their trade union representatives to negotiate the best deal possible in social partnership agreements.  This leaves the ground completely free to neo-liberals and will eventually limit the potential of public and social investment.   Public sector employees should, through their trade unions and other voluntarist means, enter into this debate fully.  Every time this neo-liberal nonsense raises its head, it should be countered, deconstructed and challenged as part of a long-term strategy of creating a more informed political culture.

Otherwise, the economic and political Tarzans will swing us from tree to tree in a dense forest of ignorance.