Eis um tema a debater, se quisermos eficiência na despesa pública

«Câmaras gastam 20 milhões de euros por ano nos estádios municipais do Europeu».

Porque não é só de poupança que se trata, mas da aplicação racional dos fundos públicos e do tipo de prioridades que apoiamos. Para evitar que o TGV (ou parte dele) e outras apostas oficiais (ou a sua forma: p.e., a actual Parque Escolar) sejam mais um buraco negro (ou «elefante branco»), seria bom que fosse tudo bem discutido.

A saída social-democrata para a crise

"(...) [T]he decision to the engage the state in the provision of fixed investment is mostly based on supply-side policy considerations. Public investment is always conditional on balanced budgets and reasonable growth rates. More public investment is undertaken by social democratic governments only after the finances of the state have been balanced (either through higher taxes or as a consequence of an upturn in the business cycle). Large public deficits, incurred to achieve a temporary boost in consumption, are abhorred by social-democratic governments because they threaten to erode public savings and therefore the overall rate of domestic savings. Thus, in turn, affects the investment rate in a way that upsets the core of a social democratic supply-side economic strategy. A leftist strategy based on 'spending one's way out of the crisis' may occasionally happen (as indeed took place in several countries in the late 1970s) but is exceptional. Long-term economic growth, allocated in a redistributive manner, takes precedence over short-term, demand-management policies".

in Carles Boix, Political Parties, Growth and Equality: Conservative and Social Democratic Economic Strategies in the World Economy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p.69)