Underinvesting in the public good

Dan Little writes about Underinvesting in the public good.

Failure to achieve these kinds of social gains through public investment might seem like a very basic element of injustice within our society. But it also looks like strong evidence of system failure: the political and economic system fail to bring about as much public good as is possible in the circumstances. The polity is stuck somewhere on the low shoulders of the climb towards maximum public benefit for minimum overall investment. It is analogous to the situation in private economic space where there are substantial obstacles to the flow of investment, leaving substantial possible sources of gain untapped. It is s situation of massive collective inefficiency, quite the contrary of Adam Smith's view of the happy outcomes of the hidden hand and the market mechanism.

Emphasis Mine

This is not evidence of a systemic failure. The system is working fine for the Capitalists. Their wealth are at all-time high. They are garnering a greater share of the GDP through record profits.

What Little is referring to is the failure of this wealth to be properly invested for the benefit of the whole society. This does not happen in a class-based society: the ruling class looks after itself. They only need to spend enough to keep the rest of us in line through propaganda, policing, and military.

Over half of the US Government budget is spent on the military, and that spending is bigger than the next biggest 25 countries in the world combined. So much poverty and death could be avoided if that money was spent there instead on the US military. But no, the wealth and power of the rich has to be protected at all costs.

Real social investment can only occur when the working class takes control of the economy and polity in order to direct investment into areas of most social need.