The great contest of the cuts has begun. Whose axe is biggest? Fastest slasher takes all. If that is the electoral battleground, then all is lost. Only by shifting the argument altogether and changing the language of debate can sanity prevail.

No sign of it so far, as Ed Balls swings his mallet first with an incredible – yes, I mean literally unbelievable – promise to cut £2bn from schools by axing heads and deputy heads, often the best school talent around. It's to be done by that magician, "natural wastage", a wish-think we will hear much of. That's a bad start, but all too typical of what will happen in this disastrous anything–you-can-cut-I-can-cut-better gladiator fight.

For the truth is that cutting well is even harder than spending well. Those of us who have lived through savage cuts before know how it's done: there is rarely time for a rethink, let alone a re-organisation or rationalisation. Assuming a near-certain Tory win, straight after Osborne's emergency June budget, local managers will be told to cut a set sum by a set date – fast. (Devolution is very handy in hard times.) So what goes?

First, cut the more junior staff, usually on the frontline, because sacking senior people is too expensive with their pricey redundo. That means sacking more people, as each junior makes less saving. Then cut any outside contracts ASAP because it's easier, even if the contracted-out service is essential and efficient. Stop any building repairs: we are returning to a long age of public squalor. Stop anything preventive: chiropody services are cut quicker than you can say bunion, though it makes old people immobile and soon in need of much more expensive care services. Cut other home care that keeps them independent: no one can see those. But beware of axing highly visible, if less useful, hospital treatments, because patient groups and hospital consultants make most fuss. Noise counts most.

Drug treatments for addicts can be cut as they have no voice: if crime rises, it's not my budget, guv. A&E gets clogged again – forget the four-hour rule – as other preventive community services shut. Bed blockers fill acute wards again for lack of services to take them back into the community. One service's cut is another's added pressure: forget "partnership working" as everyone clutches the shrinking budget in their silo. There is no time for health, social care, local authority, police and all the rest to work out how best to pool dwindling resources. School welfare and school nursing work will vanish, more kids in trouble, more antisocial behaviour – but that's not on the school's budget. Sharing is for lush times – in the panic of cuts it's every service for itself.

So what would good rationalisation look like? Take education. First, reduce its objectives to a basic three: educate everyone to the highest level; educate the top brains – the scientists, engineers and ideas generators of the future; use every resource to redress the damage done by destructive social backgrounds.

Then ask, where is the best bang for every education buck? Ask why it is we spend most where it's least use, and least where lives can still be transformed? Early years matter most, the younger the better for children at risk of failing. Primary schooling is already remedial, but can still change lives. Secondary schooling is mostly already too late, while university adds least to life chances. So why do we spend 50% more a head on undergraduates than on primary schoolers, and even less on under-5s?

Good reordering would radically reduce the inexplicable cost of university degrees; make most courses two intensive years somewhere close to home, wasting no more on hotel costs for two-bedroom students. (Research money and MAs for top brains come from a different budget already). Channel university savings into intensive one-to-one help for the youngest: once every seven-year-old can read, write and add up, the rest of education is easy. Everything else becomes cheaper too, since prisons and social services are peopled with the illiterate and helpless.

That's what clever cuts might look like – creative, productive, purposeful. But don't hold your breath. Great headline-grabbing axes don't do wise and thoughtful.

Have your say at theguardian.com/anewpublicservices – the best responses will be published in the paper next Wednesday