Functions of the Government

There are many different functions of the government including; providing a legal system, promoting competition, providing public goods, ensuring economy wide stability, government-sponsored and government-inhibited goods, income redistribution, publicly subsidized healthcare, and economic issues of public education.

Providing a legal system has helped to enable stability throughout the country for many years. It has established legal institutions, which specialize in understanding the rules of the country. The legal system has also helped to establish property rights for individuals and businesses, helping to enable the business to use its property more efficiently. Promoting competition has helped push the economy to new levels, requiring each business to be more innovative than its competitors. This has helped to give people choices when buying and helped to push for new technology. Providing public goods provided by the government are also imperative. National defense is an example of a public good, we all pay tax to fun the military but it promises protection for the whole country. Paying taxes, or buying protection, for one person does not limit the protection for another person in the country. It is also important that the government focuses on ensuring economy wide stability. If the percentage of people that are unemployed gets too high, the government must step in and help to solve the problem, bringing stability back to the economy. Government-sponsored are bought by the government because they deemed socially desirable. A museum is an example of a government-inhibited good; it was purchased as a provision for the people in society. A government-inhibited good is the opposite; the government purchases these goods because they are deemed socially undesirable. Cigarettes are an example of a government-inhibited good; because they are socially undesirable the government places a heavier tax on them. Income redistribution from the government helps