by William Thornton » Fri Jan 31, 2014 6:22 am
Many public services in my local community are privatized or are being considered for privatization. Garbage collection, for example, is private, gummit merely setting some ground rules. The incentive for privatization is to keep gummit from rewarding one group at the expense of taxpayers. Gummit employees lobby and schmooze with elected officials to obtain generous defined benefit pensions. Since individual taxpayers lose little, a few bucks each per month, the system works until unfounded liabilities balloon to staggering sums.
Teachers, firefighters, and police are likely places to find such problems. The typical scenario here is that these constituencies are rewarded for certain politicians to be elected and worry about the expense later. In Keith's gummit
love fest he fails to consider that gummit has no interest of its own and elected officials have primarily self interest (being reflected) as their motivation. At the least the motivations of politicians and capitalists share that one characteristic. But capitalists in their quest for profits will increase shareholder value whereas gummit in their quest for electoral success will have picked winners and losers based on political support.
As examples, look at Detroit and other cities, bloated pensions and the gaming of benefits for employees, our congress reelection rares, the national debt and deficit spending.
...but maybe in Alabama folks don't look at 'getting on with the city or county' as a lifetime job with great retirement benefits.
My stray thoughts on SBC stuff may be found at my blog,