In his classic book The Affluent Society, the late John Kenneth Galbraith
argued that Western democracies often undervalue public goods and
place too much value on private consumption. He lamented the resulting
contrast between “private opulence” and “public squalor.”
Harold Smith/Alamy Stock Photo
An alternative view has many supporters who agree with Nobel Laureate
James Buchanan that society has reached a point where the value of the
marginal dollar spent by government is less than the value of that dollar
left in the hands of households or firms. Advocates of this view argue that
because bureaucrats are spending other people’s money, they care very
little about a few million or billion dollars here or there. They have only a
weak sense of the opportunity cost of public expenditure and, thus, tend