Question

In: Economics

should the government provide public goods

should the government provide public goods

Solutions

Expert Solution

Public goods refers to the goods which are used by one and all. It is defined as goods or service which are provided by government or private organisations to meet the needs of basic amenities of common people or the society without earning profits on those goods and services.

Examples. Common examples of public goods include: defence, public fireworks, lighthouses, clean air , parks, sewage facility , roads and highways and other environmental goods, and information goods, such as official statistics, software development, authorship, and invention.

The basic rule says that government provides vital services that are not profitable on their own, hence nobody in the private sector will provide. Over time a private sector may mature to provide these services but until then it’s the job of the government to take care of the need.

Once the private sector stands up and starts providing the said service it becomes the job of the government to make sure that people have access to vital services by regulating the private sector. So basically the government provides the energy production until the private sector can take over and once that happens the government makes sure that everyone gets access to energy while not being cheated by the private sector.

In actual government provides various facilities of public goods and services in the form building roads or highways, maintaining parks, defence equipment, sewage system and more . In order to build such infrastructure government charges taxes and excise duty to collect some form of cash to provide public goods to general public.

Therefore , ultimately government provides public goods and services either by itself or by private organisations.


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