Just to be clear (this thread is insanely OT, btw, but interesting)... It's absurd to suggest that money that the government allocates for culture is money taken away from core services like health, when the amount spent on these core services totals in the billions, rather than the millions.
>From the budget, money gets explicitly earmarked for expenditure in particular areas. So by the stage that these so-called gravy train project the government has already decided that the money spent on health, education, etc is set at the appropriate level. The broken window argument is about unintended consequences (ie: so called economic benefits of what might conventionally thought of as an accident or loss). I'm not sure how this applies to pejorative claims about "wastage", since the money would have been allocated to this sector regardless, it's not an unforseen event, and the microeconomics is irrelevant unless you're one of the companies competing for contracts. I recommend looking at the actual numbers... we're talking about less than 0.3% of your annual taxes here. see: http://rowansimpson.com/2008/06/08/tax-statement/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
