How Privatization Rips Us All Off

[Ichingcarpenter]

The Project on Government Oversight found that in 33 of 35 cases the federal government spent more on private contractors than on public employees for the same services. The authors of the report summarized, "Our findings were shocking."

Yet our elected leaders persist in their belief that free-market capitalism works best. Here are a few fact-based examples that say otherwise.

Health Care: Markups of 100%....1,000%....100,000%

Broadcast Journalist Edward R. Murrow in 1955: Who owns the patent on this vaccine?
Polio Researcher Jonas Salk: Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?

We don't hear much of that anymore. The public-minded sentiment of the 1950s, with the sense of wartime cooperation still in the minds of researchers and innovators, has yielded to the neoliberal winner-take-all business model...............

more and the examples


http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-privatization-rips-us-all

[liberal N proud]

1. The push to privatize underlines the corruption in our leadership

Congress is not owning to the American people but to the corporations to which they are in debt.

[djean111]

2. I am still shocked at the difference between Sanders and Obama on infrastructure -

Bernie proposes public spending, which will help workers and the infrastructure and the economy, Obama proposes "private-public partnership" - which boils down to privatization, IMO.

[deutsey]

3. The system has been rigged to work that way, imo

Just look at that report about Wall Street types saying they're going to stop donating to the Democrats because of Elizabeth Warren's "attacks" on Wall Street:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/237190-wall-street-banks-mull-freezing-dem-donations-over-warren

Four major banks are threatening to withhold campaign donations to Senate Democrats in anger over Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) attacks on Wall Street.

Representatives from financial powerhouses Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America recently met in Washington and discussed the growing hostility towards big business within the Democratic ranks, according to a Reuters report Friday.

Bank officials cited Warren and Senate Banking Committee ranking member Sherrod Brown (Ohio) as the two main lawmakers leading the charge against them. But the banks have not agreed on how to respond together, with each firm making its own decision on donations, Reuters reported.

Both political parties have made a Faustian bargain with Wall Street and the interests it serves.

[GoneFishin]

4. I went to school with a kid that traded his dad's precious metals collector coins for cigarettes.

It's the same principle. They are selling shit that is not theirs to sell, so they sell it cheap. The fact that they are never punished is just a technicality.