The government plays a very important role
in that it provides public services such as schools, public libraries, public
transit and military to people. All of these services are necessary to people
and the government should not stop funding for them. However, if a country
faces an econoomic crisis and it needs to cut funding for public services, I
think the government should reduce spending on public libraries. This is
because the benefits from public libraries do not exceed their costs and there
are alternatives to public libraries.
First of all, the benefits from public
libraries do not exceed their costs. This is because a large amount of money is
required to build and maintain public libraries but only a small percentage of
people actually use them on a regular basis. This shows that reduction of
spending on public libraries would save a lot of money but would not have a great
effect on a large number of people. This is supported by a recent study showing
that only 30 percent of Korea citizens visit public libaries. In contrast, more
than half of Korean use public transportation and more than 90 percent of
Korean children attend a public school. Thus, the government should not cut
funding for education and transportation.
On top of that, even if the government
spends less money on public libraries, public libraries users still have
alternatives to public libraries for obtaining reading materials. Instead of
going to libaries, they can buy used books at low prices. This demonstrates
that people would not be largely affected by reducing funding for public
libraries. For instance, I recently wanted to borrow a couple of books to read during
winter vacation, but the public library in my hometown was closed for a national
holiday. Instead, I went to a local bookseller who offered a variety of books. I
bought some books that I had been wanting to read at a cheap price. On the
other hand, military services cannot be replaced by any organization. So, the
government should not reduce spending on military services. Funding for the
miltary should not be reduced.
To sum up, benefit-cost ratio of public
libraries is lower than that of other public services and there are other proper
alternatives to public libraries. In this regard, the government should spend
less money on public libraries in case of economic crises.