Protesting in Wisconsin....Just the beginning?

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Originally Posted by Navaja

The solution to education is private schools.

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What will you get then ? What you pay for, that is: good schools for rich people's children, then going down to crap schools for the poor. Unless you don't think education is important, privatisation of schools is a really bad idea. Make sure the public money spent on schools is spent well, but don't go to a system where there's shareholders and CEOs to pay, that will make education only more expensive.

Why do so many among you think privatisation is the solution for everything ?

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Originally Posted by decraew

Why do so many among you think privatisation is the solution for everything ?

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We already have plenty of proof that the government can't even run a candy store successfully. (USPS, Amtrak, etc)

Privatization brings in competition, leading to better quality and lower costs.

Why do you think home schooling is becoming more popular every day?

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Originally Posted by Navaja

Privatization brings in competition, leading to better quality and lower costs.

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That's the idea behind privatisation indeed. Except that, as a generalisation, I don't believe it for one second. Oh, a lot of government agencies are run badly. But so are some private companies (Enron, some banks, remember ?).

I fully agree with the idea of competition, that's the good point about privatisation. Although it doesn't always work because there are too few providers, or priviliged providers (the name Haliburton ring a bell ?). Closer home I'm thinking of energy providers and mobile network providers.

Better quality ? Sometimes, yes, but I would prefer to make sure the government agencies work well. Health care e.g. works better in my country, at a lower cost, and it's definitely not in private hands. I've heard the complaint that in the UK, after privatisation, the train service actually got worse (one of the UK members care to comment ?)

Lower costs ? Taking into account executive pay, marketing costs, profits to shareholders ? There's just no way ... unless you ship the work to India and the likes.

Don't get me wrong, I fully support privatisation in some instances. I just don't see it as the Holy Solution To Every Problem that a lot see in it. There's a lot of problems involved too.

Also, for me it is unethical to make money out of something like e.g. warfare, healthcare, education. But I know that's not a popular view of things.

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Originally Posted by Navaja

Why do you think home schooling is becoming more popular every day?

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Because some parents believe the Earth is Flat, and are disgusted by schools that stubbornly refuse to teach Flat Earth Theory ?
No seriously, I can believe your education system sucks, but I don't believe privatisation is the way to go. Unless you think it's ok that the quality of your education depends on how much you pay for it.
I know our education system works, and, you know what, it's not privatised at all !

Column: Do unions help or hurt public education? | MLive.com

interesting read from someone who has studied Teacher unions over the past 20+ years.

Privatization eh? When I worked for the Fed Govt my office had all the clerks in one unit privatized. So lets see how that worked. At that time the Govt counterparts were Gs-3 clerks earning 15 grand a year and their benefits. The private outfit paid their people 18 grand a year however they had no benefits at all and because they worked them at 39 hours a week didn't even qualify under state law benefits. So instead of the employees getting a decent deal the owners of the company were raking in the big bucks. Every other month they were taking up collections because one of these people had some financial issue due to sickness usually since they had no medical benefits and couldn't afford to buy a plan.

It's only when you figure costs over 30-50 years that the Govt came out ahead. Short term it cost them way more money. Unfortunately many of the companies lost contracts and many Govt employees these days quit before ever making it to retirement so many of these money saving models were political garbage.

Plato said that, "One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors."

And so it has come to pass.