Ilusão Fiscal Optimista (subdimensionamento do Estado)

Um clássico:

We are curiously unreasonable in the distinctions we make between different kinds of goods and services. We view the production of some of the most frivolous goods with pride. We regard the production of some of the most significant and civilizing services with regret.
In the general view (...) public services may be necessary (...) but they are a burden which must, in effect, be carried by the private production. If that burden is too great, private production will stagger and fall.
Such attitudes lead to some interesting contradictions. Cars have an importance greater than the roads on which they are driven. (...) We set great store by the increase in private wealth but regret the added outlay for the police force by which it is protected. Vaccum cleaners to ensure clean houses are praiseworthy and essential in our standard of living. Street cleaners to ensure clean streets are an unfortunate expense. Partly as a result, our houses are generally clean and our streets generally filthy.
Not surprisingly, modern economic ideas incorporated a strong suspicion of government. The goal of nineteenth-century economic liberalism was a state which did provide order reliably and inexpensively and which did as little as possible else.
Alcohol, comic books, and mouth-wash all bask under the superior reputation of the market. Schools, judges, and municipal swimming pools lie under the evil reputation of bad kings."

in Galbraith, J.K., "The Aflluent Society", Penguin edn., pp. 115-18