Public budget is hard to value

New line of tramway in the city: 200 million

Reform of the city's main square: 600 million 

One kilometer of High-speed train line: 15 million

This article: priceless

 Tramway line in Barcelona

Is that expensive or is that cheap?


Seemingly, all this things are very expensive, because we are talking about millions of euros, but this is not a personal budget, but a public one, and the amount of money that has to be invested in regular public things is very different than the money that we invest in our personal lives. 

A new train line, a new school and a new motorway is not cheap, but necessary, and that's why public administrations build them for us but, if we are not managing this budget, how can we know that the prices are right?


 


How to have an opinion about public expenses?


If my major says that the new tramway costs 200 million euros, honestly I don't know if this is expensive or cheap. Why? Because it is a budget that I am not used to with and I don't know about tramway lines cost.

First of all, we don't how much money is available to be expended by public administration. Do you know how much money your country collect from taxes every year? I don't

Second, unlike our personal budget, we don't manage this budget, so we are not familiar with it. If we go to the supermarket, we know what is cheap and what is not, because know how much we can expend and we are constantly comparing prices. 

If we want to know if the tramway line is cheap, expensive or simply affordable or not, we need to learn what is the amount of money that public administration collects, which are the main areas to be invested in (health, education, security, facilities, etc) and the money generally invested. 

We may get familiar with the public budget as we are with our personal budget, and we could improve our opinion about public expenses.