Rubbish distinction

Walking across a litter-strewn footbridge today, I contemplated that cuts in public services mean that sweeping is probably less frequent. In the private sector, litter would be a good thing, because it generates work, all the way up stream from the landfill site via the lorry driver to the roadsweeper and the people who packaged the product and the people who manufactured the packaging. Introduce the public sector, though, and these same operations are seen as inherently wasteful - and so they are, but irrespective of whether the clear up is paid for by taxes or not.