[quote=CA renter]
The only thing privatization does is expand the wealth/income gap and concentrate power into fewer and fewer hands. It does NOT save taxpayers or consumers money. It will NOT result in more or better paying jobs for workers. Learn about the people and organizations behind the privatization movement to see why this is being pushed.[/quote]

That’s because of the way it’s done. It’s almost always done as a transfer of a public service monopoly to a private service monopoly. We’re taking bids to select the new single provider of x service. It’s never we’re opening up this service to all business that would like to perform the task. I don’t expect the practice to change. I’m just saying that privatization could be successful if done in the manner I described. I’m well aware that there would be concerns and some pains associated with that type of change at first but eventually it would be a better system.

Obviously that’s not practical for some services but it’s the monopoly aspect of many government services that leads to inefficiencies and high costs. There’s no incentive to change or be more efficient if you don’t have any competition. The only thing the taxpayers can do is leave the city if the city doesn’t want to improve efficiency, witness Detroit.

Schools are a great example. Eventually somebody is probably going to figure out a better more efficient and cost effective way to do K-12 education in a charter school (maybe even online, who knows). The public school system (teacher unions and especially administrators) is desperately attempting to protect it’s monopoly of K-12 education because they know when somebody figures it out they are done for. Privatization of education is eventually going to happen and the costs will come down. The only question is when? It should be interesting to watch the educational complex fight this inevitable change. The medical system will likely see the same fight.