Public vs Private Services

One of the more insidious change of the last 30 or 40 years is that our old system of working for a company that provided us a decent living wage, health insurance and a pension has largely disappeared.

Those things got too expensive so we have seen automation ad outsourcing make each of us a free agent.

Few companies offer traditional pensions anymore, health insurance has large deductibles and co-pays and employment is often a tenuous thing as both companies and employees feel little loyalty to each other.

Further we have seen many of our young people saddled with student debt they may never pay off.

This is not the fault of the liberal elite, it is simply the obvious result of capitalist greed.

Those who can profit from us, do.

Instead of providing things like health care, schools and pensions as a public service we have seen the proponents of privatization (and profit) argue that the public sector is too inefficient and that the private sector can do it better.

It can for those who profit from it, not those who have to use it.

This belief that the private sector is more efficient, is simply not true, it is simply better at making some people rich and milking the rest of us.

If it does it cheaper, which it usually doesn't, it is because it cuts services, not because it weeds out inefficiency.

Yes, private industry is in many ways brutal in how it is willing to overwork people and cut jobs but is that really the goal?