ABSTRACT
The vast majority of mainstream economists believed that public expenditures are unproductive. According to Hazlitt, social expenses drive the nation to ruin. The majority of Marxist authors did not agree with the idea that public expenditures and public labour could be productive. In response to Bacon and Eltis, Ietto Gillies are not luxury goods, in the sense Sraffa attributed to the term. But Bacon and Eltis retorted that it is impossible to draw a clear-cut distinction between basic goods and luxury goods. Gough wrote that public workers are in general unproductive because their labour is exchanged with revenue, not capital. However, he makes exceptions not only for public enterprises but also for social services like healthcare, education, housing, etc. Marxist authors, the balance sheet is equally dramatic. Here, too, the conservative view prevails, seeing state expenditures as unproductive employment of social wealth and a desperate attempt to avoid the final crisis of the system.
