Let's try this again:
There is absolutely no reason why we cannot fund free admission to museums and galleries. The reason that they are underfunded is political/ideological, not economic. Ever since Thatcher was in power the tories have sought to 'shrink the state' and privatise public services. This is ideology, not economics.
As for economics, the idea that national finances run on the same lines as household budgets is entirely false. The nation does not have an 'income' limited by the amount of money they can recoup in tax, nor is it limited by anything else. It used to be limited by the amount of gold it held but 'the gold standard' was abolished in the early 1970s and since then the government has been free to issue as much money as it pleases. Taxation has an important role to play but its prime function is to prevent inflation caused by too much money circulating in the economy. A secondary function is to prevent inequalities caused by wealthy people acquiring yet more wealth, monpolising the money in the economy and not returning money to the economy through spending (and ultimately, taxation). But while ever resources are in plentiful supply and available for purchase there can be very little inflation.
(And please don't say Venezuela or Zimbabwe because their economic problems, while caused by an oversupply of money, have a very different basis. They are not mature democracies with a very long established central banking system. They are also rife with corruption, far in excess of any that might exist in the UK. Japan is a much better example of a stable country running a big deficit at no detriment to their economy)
It is the government, through the Bank of England, or through banks licensed to issue money, which issues money. That is why the government can spend vast amounts on quantitative easing and on projects like preparing for Brexit. Vast amounts which are not funded by tax revenue.
As far as public spending is concerned, tories don't like it because it ostensibly deprives private enterprise of profits. However, when you look at it logically there is no reason why it should do so because all public services' resources are supplied by private enterprise. Medicines, equipment, food, uniforms, railway engines, etc. etc. We have no public companies supplying resources. The only thing that private enterprise is denied is the opportunity to make a profit by supplying the actual service.
There is a strange feeling in existence that money spent by the government on public services disappears into a big black hole and is never seen again. This is absurd. The wages of public servants are spent in the economy on things supplied by private enterprise and, as I've already pointed out, the actual services themselves purchase everything they need from private enterprises. Most of the money the government issues eventually comes back to it by way of taxation. The only money that doesn't is that which is saved in this country or that which is sent off to tax havens to avoid being liable for UK taxation. The so called 'deficit' is really people's savings or money squirrelled off abroad.
If anyone is interested I suggest they read this explanation by Richard Murphy: www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/05/10/pretty-much-all-that-most-people-need-to-know-about-modern-monetary-theory/
It really is time that people started thinking clearly about how a country is financed (clue, it isn't from taxation) instead of just chanting the 'we can't afford it' mantra straight from the Maggie Thatcher songbook..
