'Wealth' versus 'Money'

Listening to the heated arguments about increasing National Insurance contributions (as New Labour, the "party of the middle class", are proposing), I'm struck by a number of assumptions that noone from the three largest parties are challenging :

1) that the public sector is grossly inefficient, whereas the private sector isn't. I struggle a bit to understand how companies that pay the salaries to their board members that they do could possibly be 'efficient'.

2) that investment in the NHS, schools and policing wouldn't create (or protect) jobs, whereas holding back on National Insurance increase would. I'd have thought that if creating jobs was the objective, hospitals and schools in particular create proportionately far more jobs per pound of investment. Many private sector companies are falling over themselves to outsource their employment to the developing world. You can export manufacturing and finance jobs, but you can't export nursing and teaching jobs.

Oxfordshire County Council, Oxford University, the hospitals/PCT and Brookes University account for 58,500 jobs in Oxfordshire, by far the biggest provider of employment. Remember - that's direct employees : you can easily double the figure if you include all the subcontractors and indirect jobs created.

3) that the only people who create wealth are people in the private sector who make things. (Well, who used to. Increasingly, they make their profits by selling things made elsewhere, or by selling financial services. Are we to become a 'nation of shopkeepers'?) The assumption seems to be that doctors, nurses, teachers, cleaners, social workers etc etc don't create wealth. But wealth is not money. Wealth is a roof over your head, warmth in winter, food on the table, healthcare, being surrounded by people who care for you, security and having an opportunity to contribute. It's also about having a healthy relationship with the planet. A lot of profit making enterprise actually undermines true wealth.

4) And besides, don't hospitals and schools pay National Insurance employer's contributions, too?

For me, the fact that these assumptions - which are fundamental in Green thinking - are not being challenged is further proof that the main parties have lost the plot.