The responsibility of government

The government of a modern western democracy is responsible for the welfare of its citizens. There are many ways of describing how they go about this. One method of analysis is to break the pursuit of this end into two key functions:

1) The creation and maintenance of an environment in which citizens can maintain and even advance their own welfare (you might call this their liberty).

2) The provision of such means as to maintain their welfare to at least a minimum level if for some reason they cannot do this themselves (you might call this equality).

Of these two functions, the first government can only influence. There are many factors within this beyond their control, not the least of which are the citizens own will and influences beyond the bounds of the state. The second is almost entirely within the control of the government to provide. Almost, because its ability to provide this - what is today called the welfare state - is dependent on its spending power. Its spending power, and its willingness to spend.

Of these two functions, which is more important? The Tea Party Movement would argue equality without liberty is equality of misery, and so worth nothing at all. An opponent hailing from the school of Marx might well counter that Liberty is a beourgoise luxury and doesn't exist for someone with no food, no shelter and no health. Most sane individuals can see both are important, and that their existence is not antagonistic. Most of the time, you need not harm liberty by increasing equality, and there are many ways liberty can be increased without damaging equality. The contrast between the US and UK currently is interesting for exactly this reason. The Tea Baggers believe that performing the second function contradicts the first. Interestingly, over here the criticism of Government spending cuts is that it will derail the former, ie the jobs and economic growth that allow citizens to maintain their own welfare, but it is being done to sustain the latter.

If a country has no money, it cannot provide welfare. It cannot fulfil the second function without the spending power. Cutting as we are now protects that future spending power, although at the cost of allowing people to provide for themselves. 1m will be made unemployed so we can afford to maintain the welfare of the 3m currently unemployed (plus all the others dependent on government welfare in some way or another - that is, all of us!). That is why these cuts are being made. That is the context in which the argument is made, and the reality of the situation. That is why we can't do the first, because we have to take care of the second.

Of course, there is a caveat: the will to spend. Labour claim we have more spending power than the government say, and the reason we are cutting so much is because that is what we want to do, not what we have to do. They are certainly right for certain individuals within the Tory party. They are certainly wrong for certain individuals within the Lib Dems. Are they right or wrong about members of the Government? Of the Lib Dems? Of the Cabinet?

That argument is unfalsifiable. Those who say they know conclusively either way do not. They can't. Only government, the Lib Dems, the Cabinet, the MP's themselves know. They will say it is need, but can we trust them? In the end, it all comes down to faith, which is at once terrifying, but hopelessly romantic.