Community Facilities and Services: An Economic Framework for Analysis

Abstract

ISHALL begin this paper with the observation that a nation of generally wealthy and prosperous individuals finds itself relatively poor with respect to public goods. We also find communities of poverty within our midst-communities where many public services are either lacking or of a disgraceful quality. Faced with this kind of situation, the arguments for additional expenditures are vague expressions of need, and the arguments against follow the theme that in spite of all our wealth we simply cannot afford additions to the public sector. Economists generally, agricultural economists in particular and administrators in the USDA-land-grant university system must bear a large part of the responsibility for this lack of more definitive knowledge. It is astonishing that agricultural economists should know so much about how to produce or how to control the production of feed grains, wheat, and cotton and at the same time know so little about the way people live or the costs and effects of improving the manner in which they live. Some notion of our priorities can be gained by a perusal of the Long Run Research study and noting the recommended increases in scientific manyears1 devoted to people problems as compared to production problems. It is my contention that our priorities reflect the critical issues of a day long since past and that although some progress is being made in the rearrangement of our priorities the rate of progress is far too slow. I choose to define the problem of community services as one of public goods or services. Further, I accept as a definition of a public good2 that which meets at least one of three conditions: (1) jointness of supply (that is, consumption of the good does not preclude its consumption by others: the lighthouse is a classic example), (2) existence of external effects which accrue to other persons or communities and for which it is infeasi-