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RAHN: Privatize almost everything: With money running low, government functions become inviable
Washington Times ^ | 05/01/2013 | By Richard Rahn

Posted on 05/01/2013 5:35:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

As a mental challenge, try to think of all of the governmental activities — federal, state and local — that could be privatized. Now, go a step further. Suppose you were required to develop a plan to privatize, or make self-supporting through user fees, nearly every activity of government. Could you or a group of your friends do it? Try it. I expect your success will surprise you. The reason this is relevant is because most governments will reach their borrowing limits in the not-too-distant future, which means they will have to operate on current revenue from taxes and fees.

Many governments have reached or are reaching their ability to increase taxes, and income-tax systems will begin to fall under their own weight. Governments will be forced to downsize and privatize — or private citizens and groups will just take over as they are increasingly doing because of failing government schools, for example.

The U.S. government was created to protect people and property and to ensure liberty; but more and more often, it does just the opposite. The air-traffic controller fiasco last week was a perfect illustration of how almost all governments eventually turn against the citizens they are supposed to protect and serve.

As The Wall Street Journal noted April 26, the Federal Aviation Administration “managed to convert a less than 4 percent budget cut into a 10 percent air traffic control cut that would delay 40 percent of flights.” This occurred despite several years of substantial budget increases for the agency, coupled with a decreasing number of flights and workload for the controllers. The episode demonstrates not only gross managerial incompetence but an incredible degree of mean-spiritedness by the folks at the FAA and in the administration, right up to President Obama himself.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: privatization; privatize

1 posted on 05/01/2013 5:35:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Actually, I appreciate the sentiment of the author. But, I am more predisposed to eliminating those functions that are superfluously entitlement-based on their face. (SNAP, TANF, WICs for illegals, EITC, Section 8)

Then we can think about ‘privatizing’.


2 posted on 05/01/2013 5:37:46 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: Gaffer

Gaffer for President!


3 posted on 05/01/2013 5:46:10 AM PDT by Gen.Blather
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To: SeekAndFind
Which came first? Individual enterprise, or government?

Which can exist without the other? Individual enterprise, or government?

4 posted on 05/01/2013 5:47:20 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Islam is a religion of peace, and Moslems reserve the right to behead anyone who says otherwise.)
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To: SeekAndFind

It is easy to find ways to privatize a lot and it would probably be handled better by the private sector. But it will never happen because government control of these activities has nothing to do with providing necessary services in an efficient manner. Its about the government collecting as much power for itself as possible. The bureaucrats in government want to get their hands on everything and don’t want to give up anything. Its a self-perpetuating, ever-expanding institution.


5 posted on 05/01/2013 5:55:54 AM PDT by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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To: SeekAndFind

We first need to reconcile our American trade picture.

Stop sending US trade overseas.

Bring back US jobs. FIRST. Then and only then, discuss how we can construct an ideal system go-forward.

But we must return US jobs now. Before any other move.

Now.


6 posted on 05/01/2013 5:58:02 AM PDT by Cringing Negativism Network
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To: Cringing Negativism Network

No Freepers are so intent on stopping government programs that they cannot realize he outcome.

They want to stop SNAP, WIC, etc... programs. THEN try to bring back the jobs.

Most don’t realize that while they will pat themselves on the back satisfyingly, there will be so much disruption (hunger causes a lot of backlash, go figure) and there won’t be JOBS for those formerly on these programs that it will squash it before it begins.

There are many on SNAP and other programs that never imagined they would be on it, and would gladly get off it if they had a job.

The days of “only the lazy is on assistance” is over and I’d like to slap some Freepers into the new world we live in.


7 posted on 05/01/2013 6:20:50 AM PDT by autumnraine (America how long will you be so deaf and dumb to thoe tumbril wheels carrying you to the guillotine?)
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

I once worked for a city that was directed by the self proclaimed Reagan Conservative city council members to privatize water, sewer, and ambulance services. At the end of the day it was determined that privatizing the water and sewer systems would have only resulted in a projected savings of $13,000. But what was not discussed with the public by these city council members was that they would have required the city increase rates to cover all future equipment/facility replacement and repairs.

That’s the dirty little secret. For profit companies will not enter into a contract that would put them in a position of liability or loss, or risk the public health, if there is not significant capital and reserves to maintain or rebuild these systems.

Please keep in mind that these council members were opposed to any efforts by staff to do the same thing, or even to fund some very basic maintenance programs but wholeheartedly supported the privatization fiasco.

As for the ambulance service it too died as study after study showed no matter what the contract would provide, response times would dramatically increase to the point of jeopardizing people’s lives.

This whole issue led to these folks resigning or being thrown out at the next election and it tore the city apart for a number of years. Unfortunately a couple of these same folks managed to get re-elected 4 years later and they are back to their old ways. They managed to raid all of the city reserve funds to pay for more police staff while gutting every department and program, then blame staff for the city being millions in debt and keeping the budget figures from them. They do this so they can scream about how government is broken and needs to be fixed.


8 posted on 05/01/2013 6:38:27 AM PDT by shotgun
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To: autumnraine

Google “taxpayers against unfair taxes” (TAUT) and you will see what they have brought upon the people over building a new high school. The school district was stopped at the ballot for proposing a $55 million project. But these folks stepped in and promised that this was wasteful and not necessary. TAUT’s proposal was just rolled out and is projected to cost $100 million with interest and delays while proposing to “re-build” the existing high school over a 20 year period all because they were opposed to building a new school.

Truly bizarre ideas by so called conservatives...


9 posted on 05/01/2013 6:52:01 AM PDT by shotgun
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To: shotgun

Wow. So we don’t NEED a new school for $55 million, so we will pay double that to avoid that ‘unneeded’ expense.


10 posted on 05/01/2013 7:09:52 AM PDT by autumnraine (America how long will you be so deaf and dumb to thoe tumbril wheels carrying you to the guillotine?)
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To: autumnraine

Who’d a thunk it...


11 posted on 05/01/2013 7:31:01 AM PDT by shotgun
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To: autumnraine

One of my favorite lines is “if businesses ran their operations like the government, they would all go broke”.

I’ve seen a city council fight tooth and nail to keep from replacing their vehicle fleet because one of them was a mechanic and would always state he could keep them running. The average vehicle in the fleet was 24 year old. They spent $4,000 on an engine replacements for a 78 ford pickup worth less than $750. When was the last time you saw FedEx or UPS driving a 1978 delivery truck!

They fought with the Dept. of Ecology over doing any repairs at the sewer plant and even dared them to send in the national guard. Then they were sued by an environmental group and it cost them another $350,000 after they lost and their reaction was staff is just wasteful and stupid for not being able to operate the plant to keep them from getting sued.

I can give you as many boondoggle examples of this as you want.


12 posted on 05/01/2013 7:44:09 AM PDT by shotgun
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To: SeekAndFind

How about this:

Eliminate the Dept of Education
Eliminate the Department of Energy (except for the nuke stuff)
Eliminate HHS.
Strip everything except statistics from the Dept of Agriculture.
Eliminate the EPA, devolve that to the States.
Eliminate the Dept of Transportation.

Budget problem solved.


13 posted on 05/01/2013 7:49:11 AM PDT by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
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To: shotgun

What’s sad is that a lot of this is from the conservative mindset of “we are saving money.”

How do you break that type of thinking? “Saving money” isn’t always about NOT SPENDING money. Does that make sense?


14 posted on 05/01/2013 9:28:44 AM PDT by autumnraine (America how long will you be so deaf and dumb to thoe tumbril wheels carrying you to the guillotine?)
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To: autumnraine

Great question. I try to get them to understand the cost of delayed maintenance and when the need arises to “invest in new technology” show them the ROI in terms of labor, equipment, and future maintenance cost.

We once used a rebate from the power company to replace all of the traffic signal light bulbs with LED bulbs. Regular bulbs cost the city $28,000 in electricity annually, plus labor (including OT) to replace bulbs as they burnt out which was quite often. They squawked at the cost after rebate of $45,000, but we went ahead and or annual cost went down to $8000 year plus the City has not had to replace a bulb in 7 years now so we also saved on labor.

We also replaced all of our manual read water meters with automatic radio reading technology ($450,000) and the ROI was less than 2 years of savings based upon labor alone. This allowed the crew to go from a primary focus of reading meters to actually perform PM activities like system flushing, valve exercising, and mainline replacements in lieu of constantly fixing the same broken pipes that broke each year.


15 posted on 05/01/2013 9:54:39 AM PDT by shotgun
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To: Lurker

Primary focus of the Dept. of Transportation, with respect to the Federal Highway Administration, is making sure that projects take 4 times longer than necessary to construct because of all of the federal red tape required because of $1 of federal money involved in the project.

We once got a federal grant of $1.46 million for a road project and it took $900,000 just to meet the federal regulations during pre-design/design! total project cost was just shy of $5 million, so about 20% was federal red tape.


16 posted on 05/01/2013 9:59:59 AM PDT by shotgun
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