Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: nothing will ever be “adequately funded.” In pretty much any circumstance, someone somewhere will have at least some idea of what else they could do with an extra dollar or two. The fact that they have to forsake something because they have limited resources means that, in their eyes, the problem is simply that the world is not “adequately funding” whatever initiative we think is important.

There is a subtle social danger here: it is easy, therefore, to think that social problems are not because we face unavoidable trade-offs but because bad people out there have the wrong values and are thwarting the march of justice, prosperity, and equality for likely venal reasons.

You’ve heard that a task tends to expand to fill the allotted time. The same is true of budgets and spending: a project expands to fill the resources allotted to it, and it is easy from that point to say, “if only we had more resources.”

We see this in public policy all the time. Bad roads? They need more funding. Lousy schools? More funding. Illness? Funding again. There are a couple of problems, though. Roads and schools could always be better. People could always be healthier. Blaming problems on inadequate funding stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that trade-offs exist and are inevitable. When someone says they have “inadequate funding,” what they really mean is, “I could do a little more of what I find important if I had a little more money.”

There are three problems. First, people can always do something with a little more money, even if they’re just insuring against a future calamity by adding it to a rainy-day fund. Second, funds for one thing can’t be used for another, and since we don’t have infinite resources, we have to make hard choices about when to say “yes” and when we say “no.” Third, even when a cause is adequately funded–or at least funded well enough to win a particular crusade, it usually doesn’t dissolve but moves on to a different crusade because we look harder to find the chaff among steadily-growing piles of wheat.

A former colleague used to say, “the older I get, the better I was.” It’s easy and tempting to think there was once a golden age when we did things the right way. There are a few things wrong with this way of thinking. First, it’s simply false to think we’ve shortchanged things like education. Inflation-adjusted spending on K-12 education was 280% higher in 2020 than it was in 1960. The idea that education is being “de-funded” is simply false. Second, golden ages can be deceiving because of politicians’ incentives. When you’re spending future generations’ money and you know you will have moved on by the time the bill comes due, it’s easy to spend lavishly on public services and delay unremarkable things like maintenance. By the time the bill comes due, you’ve advanced in your career, and some other schmuck has been stuck with the bill.

We shouldn’t blame problems on “inadequate funding.” Nothing will ever be “adequately” funded if we can think of something else to do with the next dollar–and people will always be able to think of something else to do with the next dollar.

 

Art Carden is Professor of Economics & Medical Properties Trust Fellow at Samford University.