As a result, we have few entrepreneurial schemes for the provision of, for example, effective urban transit systems on the drawing board. Some nations have been more daring than others, and some have been more effective in managing the consequences of their initiatives than their peers. The issues of welfare, efficiency, managerial clarity and financing have, however, been deeply muddled together in public debate, to such an extent that many of the issues are now hard to discuss. There is a major task of clarification ahead. Forces that will increase pressures on states to spend more.
States have a schedule of increasingly complex tasks to fulfil, as explored elsewhere .
In addition, they have to ensure that competitiveness is maintained. This evokes a complex web of requirements, from education to infrastructure, ethos to incentives. All of this costs time as well as money and creates a major managerial task. We have already examined various ways of handling some of the more obvious examples of this, and we have considered the issues of expert regulation elsewhere . The practical limits to tax take have been discussed, and are symbolise by the thick red line.