Tweet
1. The Ambassador Bridge is privately owned, the the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel publicly owned. Both are roughly the same age, but the bridge is falling apart and the tunnel is not.
2. I would rather fly any number of state-run airlines than any US airline, including Turkish, Emirates, Singapore, and others.
3. Costs rose in Iraq when Halliburton won the right to provide services.
4. Prison operations - private ownership has introduced scandal and corruption into a service provision that had been uncontroversial before. Same goes for Chicago's parking meters.
2. I would rather fly any number of state-run airlines than any US airline, including Turkish, Emirates, Singapore, and others.
3. Costs rose in Iraq when Halliburton won the right to provide services.
4. Prison operations - private ownership has introduced scandal and corruption into a service provision that had been uncontroversial before. Same goes for Chicago's parking meters.
1. Tunnels last longer than bridges. They are not exposed to the elements. And when I talk of the private sector doing things more efficiently, I mean general things like toll roads v freeways (toll roads being better and cheaper). Comparing bridges to tunnels is apples to oranges, but I agree that Moron or whatever his name is has done a terrible job.
2. These national airlines are subsidized by the nations involved. I believe you are saying that these airlines provide a better service for roughly the same price. That's because of the subsidy.
3. I don't know about this specific case, but I'm sure Dick Cheney is to blame.
4. This is a good one. Let's put fraud and criminal behavior aside, because I can name instances of that in the public sector too. The cost I can find is about even, public prisons v. private prisons (60-57 per day per inmate). But this underreports the cost of public prisons because:
First, public systems, unlike private ones, don’t spread the costs of capital assets over the life of the assets. In most public prisons, the cost excludes the initial capital cost of building the prison. Private prison costs include that cost. This is identical to the cost of a government school v. a charter school. The cost of the building is simply omitted from the government cost. I suspect this has to do with the way budgets are constructed in the public sector.
Second, various public expenditures, including employee benefits and medical care, utilities, legal work, insurance, supplies and equipment, and various contracted services, are often borne by various other agencies in government, which might understate public costs by 30%–40%. One of the often-ignored costs in the public sector is the cost of borrowing capital. Conversely, governments bear some of the costs of private firms, for instance, in various cases, contract monitoring, inspection and licensing, personnel training, inmate transportation, case management, and maintaining emergency response teams. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.784a15d088cb
Third, and this cuts your direction, private prisons are usually guaranteed healthy prisoners. Even not including sex-change operations for the guy who is now named Chelsea, public prisons have more medical expense.
And of course, you later brought up the military which is the classic public good. That is vastly more efficient than Blackwater or any privately run military. That "patriotism discount" that we as the public get is something special. It makes you wonder why progs routinely vote against increased pay for military personnel.
Comment