Q&A: How Much Should the State Fund?
How Much Should the State Fund?
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Following the uproar over “The Jews Are Coming” and the demand to stop funding it, I found myself wondering to what extent the state should fund television at all—whether culture or entertainment. But then another question came up for me: to what extent should the state fund anything that goes beyond humanity’s practical needs, such as religious services, television, building playgrounds, community-center activities, or even planting trees along the roadsides…
What is the Rabbi’s opinion on this issue?
Answer
I don’t have a clear position on these matters. There is logic to complete privatization, especially when society is very divided and fractured and there is no agreement about what is important / appropriate and what is not. On the other hand, there are projects that would never get off the ground without government funding, and yet it is still important that they be possible in practice.
Among the examples you gave, you can see the implications. For example, who would fund planting trees along the roads? In a certain sense, this is a market failure, since it matters to everyone that this exist, but no one would actually pay for it.
Beyond all that, arguments like the one around “The Jews Are Coming” would not take place if there were no government funding, and that would be a shame. Shared projects, even when they are controversial, provide a common basis that can be discussed and around which positions and disagreements can be clarified. Otherwise, we would live even more as a collection of separate bubbles.
I don’t have a precise criterion or a sharp dividing line.