About Basic Public Goods – A Pending Task for the Economy of the 21st Century

“when there is a political will it is possible to modify the reigning equilibrium and thus tend toward a more secure peace and a greater economic wellbeing, and social justice and environmental sustainability in addition. But there is no country that can attain those world public goods on its own and neither can the world market. Therefore, our actions have to be centered now on that part of the equation which is absent: the world public goods”.

The existence of an area of basic Public Goods –education, health, public housing- implies a set of goods and services, fundamentally user goods which the economically active and passive citizenship lay their aspirations on.

The lack of commitment towards the necessary costs involved in the production of public goods eventually turns out to be a virtual profit or literally a quasi-rent for the dominant sectors in the market. How is it possible to obtain a profit though from an element that is absent from the market? Let us examine this apparent contradiction.

A superficial mention of such goods allows us to understand the scope and importance of the market we are referring to.

Let us start by pointing out that the prices at which such Public Goods are offered at prevent many people from having access to them, while all the rest, those high or medium income bracket people can consume these at market prices or even import them if they need to. Prices reflect the demand by those ones with higher incomes in the economy so as to justify a sustainable level of production.