David Cameron’s New Felicific Calculus: Do his Sums Add Up?

Civitas, 21 July 2006

David Cameron made a speech yesterday in which he unveiled the main new policies that he intends to implement if his party wins the next election.
He will, he said, provide voters with more leisure rather than tax cuts, as well as opportunity to use that increased leisure in ways he claimed are more life-enhancing and fulilling than those leisure opportunities they currently enjoy.

He will increase leisure, he said, by improving the public transport system which will reduce the time people currently spend commuting to and from work. Any scope for cutting tax forfeited by this measurel, he said, will be more than off-set by the gains in general well-being (GWB) that he claimed would flow from the enhanced leisure opportunities that he announced he also intends to make available. The new leisure opportunities for people Mr Cameron announced that he intends to provide people with were greater opportunity to manage their own lives than they currently enjoy and greater opportunity to engage in various forms of worthwhile voluntary activity than they currently have time for.
However, if, as he implied, Mr Cameron would have been able to cut taxes had he not embarked on the spending programme on public transport, then either he must have to reduce public expenditure elsewhere, or raise tax rates, or finance the increased spending from the taxed proceeds of economic growth.
Mt Cameron does not spell out which other areas of public expenditure he intends to cut, if he intends to finance the increased expenditure on transport that way. However, by saying he intends to increase people’s opportunity to participate in local government and voluntary activity, as well as strongly encourage them to take up these opportunities, he is strongly implying that he intends to pay for improved public transport by reducing the size of central government and devolving more decision-making to local authorities and by transferring to the voluntary sector as much as it can undertake that currently is being done by the state.
Basically, then, unless he intends it to pay for it entirely by the proceeds of economic growth or by increasing tax rates, he is saying that, if elected, the Tories intend to modernise public transport and pay for doing so by reducing public expenditure elsewhere in ways that will necessitate that the public assume greater responsibility for managing their own lives than they have previously had to do.
His stated reason for these measures is that, so he claims, the societies which enjoy the highest levels of general well-being have been found to be those whose members are most actively involved in local government and other forms of voluntary activity.
So, his proposed new policies are being packaged and sold in the name of enhancing the quality of people’s lives.
Will Mr Cameron be able to sell them do to the electorate, and would he deserve to? I remain unconvinced on both scores.
If the revenue needed to improve public transport is to come from cutting other areas of public expenditure, then his manifesto is liable to repel voters who have become as wedded to and dependent on public services as the British electorate has consistently shown itself to be for decades now.
Moreover, demannding that the public get more involved in administering their own lives and affairs is unlikely to enhance their quality of life, until the new mass transit systems have been built and are operational to give them the increased leisure they will need to do so. Given the present dire state of public transport, most people’s lives are hard enough already. It is all most can do, after returning home from work after their daily commute, to slump semi-comatosed in front of the tv before shuffling off to bed until the next day’s hard slog begins.
To require that on top of people look after their infirm and aged parents, or worse stil, those of others, or to require them to take an part in local government or some other form of voluntary activity that carries some task currently undertaken by the state, might increase their sense of moral self-worth or, more likely, their general feeling of resentment towards the world. It will hardly enhance their sense of well-being.
Since it is unthinkable the Tories will be returned should they propose to finance increased spending on transport by raising tax rates or by making cuts in other public services, it follows the only way they would be able to finance the increased spending on public transport is to undetake to pay for it out of the proceeds of economic growth.
So, what Mr Cameron appears to be saying is that the public should not expect to see much, if any, extra take-home pay or improvement in public services in the short-term. All they can expect is encouragement to assume ever greater responsibility for administering their own lives, until a modernised public transport system becomes operational to give them the extra leisure-time to carry out the additional tasks that are to be encouraged to take on. Not such an attractive package when finally unwrapped.
However, once the promised new transport system is in place delivering this greater leisure, what reason could there be not to cut taxes since revenue will no longer be needed to finance its building. At that point, the public could and should expect to enjoy increased leisure and tax cuts? Come that day, however, why would and should GWB be thought best enhanced by their choosing to use their leisure in the way in which Mr Cameron advocates use it, rather than in other, more consumerist and self-regarding ways? If by then the state has run down public services to require them to do for themselves things now done by it, why could and should they not use their greater disposable incomes to pay for carers and other professionals to discharge these tasks, rather than occupy their leisure time doing them?
This is a question Mr Cameron leaves unaddressed. He claims general well-being is greatest in societies whose members are most active in local government and other forms of voluntary activity. But even if this were so, it does not show their greater levels of GWB derive from the greater engagement of their memebrs in these activities. The societies with the highest levels of GWB might do so for other reasons — that is, in spite and not because of the greater involvement of their members in local government and other forms of voluntary activity. One possiblity is that their members might make better use of their remaining leisure time and possibly have more of it,so that GWB derived from other entirely more self-regarding forms of pursuit.
So, Mr Cameron has yet to show his chosen path to social nirvana is the right one. He may be right a society can increase its GDP without thereby increasing GWB. He has yet to show that, as a society, we can increase our GWB save by increasing our GDP, or that, once such any increase in GDP has been achieved, the best way in which to maximise our GWB is by our becoming more involved in taking care of ourselves and those unable to look after themselves, rather than paying others to undertake these tasks for us while we devote our leisure to other more fulfilling self-regarding pursuits.
However, Mr Cameron may not have to show any of this to win the next election. Voter disaffection with an increasingly exhausted and moribund Labour administration seems more than enough likely to assure Mr Cameron a term at Number 10 come the next election, regardless of how well or badly the sums in his new felicific calculus add up.