The Government's Dilemma

The classic dilemma for government is surely the tension between taxation and public spending. In a way, this acts as a model for more complex dilemmas that I’d like to look at in this essay. So, briefly, here is the tax-spend dilemma. Citizens don’t want to face extra taxation, but citizens want better public services. So how is the government supposed to resolve this? The strange thing about the dilemma is that it is not something hidden or obscure. Everyone knows public services have to be paid for. Everyone knows that this must be done through taxation. Everyone knows that to improve public services taxation would have to rise – there’s only so much that can be done by way of efficiency savings. And, as there’s likely to be inflation in the economy, even maintaining public services at their current levels must mean spending more, and therefore more tax. But, well, the really strange thing is that whilst everyone knows these basic facts, no government is really able to come out and say them. For some reason, this would result in public hostility. We – the electorate – despite knowing the facts, still cling to the impossible dream of improvements without cost. So, the government must be deceptive – if not actually dishonest – in order to keep in with the electorate, especially if a general election is looming. They must promise to keep taxes the same, or to lower them, but also promise to improve public services. It is only in the small print where we learn how this is to be achieved. Perhaps there are some obscure taxes that will rise – taxes that had not been mentioned by the government up to this point. Or perhaps tax exemptions will be curtailed or some benefits cut – all so that the books balance – and so it looks as though the impossible dream has been accomplished. Why, we might wonder, do most people not vote for a political party that is just straight with us? The Treasury needs more money. Taxes will rise. That’s just how it is. Why do we prefer the political party that has been – at the very least – deceptive with us? The party that will raise taxes by stealth rather than openly and transparently? That will improve mainstream services by cutting back on less obvious public spending, such that most of us are not aware that spending has stopped or been reduced to services with which most of us are less familiar? Well, that dilemma is fraught enough – and most news bulletins are full of it, most of the time. But when we turn to climate change things get even more strange. We can state the climate dilemma simply, in a manner similar to the tax-spend dilemma. So, people acknowledge there is a problem with climate change, but people do not want to pay for fixing the problem or to face any inconveniences to their lives as a result of climate change solutions. Again, the government is faced with trying to satisfy both sides of this equation. But with climate change it’s a bit more complicated. Firstly – take that initial statement I’ve made above – people acknowledge there’s a problem with climate change. Well, fair to say that even in the UK, which has the lowest rate of climate denial of any advanced economy, there is still some denial. The rise of populist right-wing political parties in recent years also adds to the numbers of deniers. Such political parties tend to have some manner of dismissive attitude towards climate. Even amongst those who accept the problem as we have it explained to us via the current scientific consensus, there are those who simply put it out of their minds as too big and complicated to think about or not too much of a problem relative to their own lives. Climate change – despite being an existential threat that could threaten the long-term viability of human civilisation – scores very poorly in terms of people’s important political concerns. Sometimes it even ranks below pot-holes and bin collections! So the government’s dilemma is exacerbated by the fact that, if they acknowledge the scale of the problem truthfully they may be accused of scare mongering or exaggeration. They may even be accused of some kind of conspiracy theory – trying to gain draconian powers over people’s lives by inventing an ‘imaginary’ problem of climate change! On the other hand, if the government does not acknowledge climate change enough, then they will be accused of complacency, not taking the magnitude of the problem seriously and putting people’s lives and livelihoods at risk. And then we come to the solutions. With our tax-spend dilemma, to a large extent, more money would have almost an immediate benefit. Even for those things like training and recruiting extra teachers, doctors, nurses, soldiers and the like, the delay in seeing the benefits is only a matter of a few years. With climate change, things are very different. It’s not that there aren’t sufficient solutions out there – because there most definitely are. It’s just that the time and effort needed to implement those solutions at a scale that will make a difference is substantially longer. Then there’s the fact that there’s a certain momentum to the climate such that even if all human-made sources of warming were to stop today it would still take several decades for the effects to work their way through and to be seen and experienced. So the timescales are as long as the adult years of the average human life. The frustrating thing about climate solutions is that they are a win-win-win-win for any nation, but only in the relatively long-term. For now, it’s mostly pain. (The win-win-win-win benefits are: Win one – a sustainable climate. Win two – a thriving natural world. Win three – cleaner, greener energy and infrastructure. Win four – long-term benefits to the economy and to employment.) Because, yes, some sacrifices would be needed. Getting used to electric vehicles is one. Getting used to heat pumps instead of gas boilers. The cost of very substantial changes to our infrastructure. And when we consider adaptation measures in the UK, we are mostly talking about flood defences – very substantial flood defences, if things continue the way they are going. So once again someone has to pay, and the only real way of paying is through taxation. Again, therefore, we can ask – why is it that a political party is not able to simply state the problem, explain the solutions and agree the changes and the costs that need to be borne? Why is it that any political party that dares to tell it like it is and be realistic about what must be done is destined for political oblivion? Why is it that instead the electorate seem to think that the miracle of addressing climate change without any cost or inconvenience is somehow possible? (Or why is it that increasing numbers have started voting for political parties that claim climate change is all a hoax, a conspiracy theory or otherwise not much of a problem?) Apart form denying the problem in some way – like the last option I mentioned above – I’m not sure that political parties are even in a position to be devious about the issue of climate change. Could they really promise to solve it at no cost? Well, in fact, such a promise has indeed been made by the UK’s current incumbent government – claiming to meet the nation’s legally-binding commitment to emissions reductions at no cost or inconvenience to the tax-payer. I’m not sure that anyone has believed it yet, but I’m sure such promises will continue to be made. We need to examine the small print! Finally, some thoughts on defence. Perhaps the threat of an all-out nuclear war is our second or third most serious existential threat to the world. But once again this often falls below pot-holes and garbage collection in the list of troubles identified by the ordinary person! So it has similar problems to climate change – people find it too big and scary a problem to even think about. And – like our other dilemmas – people want the government to solve it, without any inconvenience to their lives and without increased costs. In a way war if an even more intractable problem than climate. With climate – at least most of us would accept – we know what the problem is. We can analyse it and make predictions on an ever-increasing body of scientific observations. And we know solutions – their means of implementation and their likely costs. It’s just a matter of getting on with it. With war, the aim is very easy to state – world peace, lasting into the indefinite future. And the means of achieving it is also very easy to state – no human being is willing to fight in a war. But the gulf between where we are now and that solution seems all but unbridgeable without some radical and worldwide change in human culture, if not human nature. Instead, to analyse the problem in more realistic terms, we must do a horrible kind of calculus. What – we must ask ourselves – would be the cost of NOT fighting a war? What would be the cost of capitulation? We might caveat this by saying that not fighting might be brought about in a variety of different ways. Maybe few or none of the civilian population is willing to sign up for military service and the government is unable to persuade them, even with the threat of the death penalty for conscientious objectors. Or it might be that the government itself decides that it is better to surrender. Perhaps the hypothetical aggressor is overwhelmingly better armed, such that trying to fight would be useless. Whatever the case, a similar calculus must be applied. And this is where the problem really lies. Because, surely, there is almost no limit to how terrible the occupation by an invading power might be. It could mean unlimited enslavement and torture without foreseeable end. And on that basis any nation is surely justified in concluding that fighting a war is always going to be a better solution than surrender. In fact, even fighting an illegal war, with illegal weapons, seems justified as legitimate self-defence if the alternative is defeat by an enemy that is unimaginably terrible. This, of course, is the very worst of worst case scenarios. But the problem is that there is no way to realistically scale back on the perceived problem. Some future enemy just MIGHT be truly terrible, and therefore taking up arms against such a threat always appears justified. The only get-out clause is the scenario we’ve already, where there’s a sudden worldwide conversion of humanity to pacifism. No single nation could adopt this unilaterally as this just amounts to the capitulation situation we’ve discussed above. So the government seems to have no choice but to arm for war, and indeed to be willing to cheat in war, to use or threaten the use of illegal weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. This is maybe the worst of all the government’s dilemmas. For surely they must speak of peace and work for peace, yet be willing to resort to the most terrible of warfare, should the need arise. It is difficult to adopt pacifism as an individual or as part of a small minority. It does not really change things. So in the meantime, we can only work within the calculus - how big is the threat? And how justified is the response? All the while we should keep in mind that war is, and forever will be, terrible, dishonourable, immoral and evil.