Research purpose. As we know obfuscation is the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language. The actual meaning of tangible and intangible assets is not always clear to the decision-makers of the public economy and public services. In this article, we want to discuss these basic concepts of public service production and public service economy. The purpose of the research is to analyse key trends of tangible fixed assets and intellectual property products in some key OECD countries and link these trend analyses to the general discussion about Baumol´s cost disease theory of public economy and public productions. Design / Methodology / Approach. The research design of the trend study is linked to the OECD statistical system of BSFNFA: 9B--Balance sheets for non-financial assets, which reports tangible fixed assets (TFA) and intellectual property product (IPP). The empirical trend study relies on these statistical official OECD measures and variables. The time period of trend analysis is 20 years, from 2000 to 2019/2020. The study includes also two theoretical scenario frameworks which link tangible and intangible production to low cost – high cost dimension and tangible and intangible production low benefit – high benefit dimension. These two scenario frameworks and empirical trends analyses help researchers to discuss more analytically about Baumol´s cost disease theory. 11 Findings. The main findings of the study are the following. Theoretically, we conclude that Norman (2002) and others over-emphasise the contingent element of intangibility in services and wrongly ascribe it as a necessary condition of public services since the person-to-person element remains pervasive and important in public services. In the case of Vargo and Lusch (2004, 2007), we further conclude that ascribing logics to services, including their intangibility suggests an uncontested meaning of services that do not exist, and in doing so subsumes agency and leadership of services by imputing a deterministic trajectory. Empirically we show that tangible assets (tangible fixed assets, TFA) still play an important role in the OECD economies and these tangibility trends are still very powerful and actually increasing in key OECD countries. Secondly, we show that the role of intangible intellectual property products (IPP) is increasing in major OECD countries. Thirdly, we report quite stable trends of IPP/TFA -relationships in key OECD countries indicating that intangible/tangible assets relationship (IPP/TFA) is not changing dramatically, although there are some small variations. Fourthly, we report expenditure of health per capita index analyses of some key OECD and BRICS countries, which show upward-sloping trends. This study has presented the following arguments. Firstly, that public services are not usefully characterised as intangible; the Doctor, Nurse, Teacher, and Porter perform physical tasks, without which there is no service; even e-prescribing, e-learning, and alarm technology require artifacts and physical actions. Both processes creating public services and service outcomes prominently feature tangible elements. Secondly, we challenge Baumol’s (2012) argument that public services necessarily have lower productivity than other sectors, disputing his suggestion that cost alone, not quality, constitutes public service productivity. However, we argue that Baumol’s economistic and quantitative-only view of productivity hides more than it reveals: public services are not all intangible. Seeking efficiency and pushing costs onto public service users is misguided when the real issues are a long-term investment to create new service models, exploit intangible information flows, and to integrate services more closely, in short, to seek new effectivenesses and new governances. Originality/Value/Practical implications. The empirical trend study is highly relevant for further discussion of the public sector´s productivity and Baumol´s cost disease discussion. Keywords: Tangible fixed assets; intellectual property products; Baumol´s cost disease; Public production; Health care expenditures JEL codes: H00, H20, H30, H51, I12, I15, J38, O10, O34, O38, O40, O50, O57, P43, P51, R10, Z10