Published on Friday, June 22, 2012 by The New York Times
by Paul Krugman
SNIPS
So what’s really behind the drive to privatize prisons,
and just about everything else?
One answer is that privatization can serve as a stealth
form of government borrowing, in which governments avoid recording upfront
expenses (or even raise money by selling existing facilities) while raising
their long-run costs in ways taxpayers can’t see. We hear a lot about the
hidden debts that states have incurred in the form of pension liabilities; we
don’t hear much about the hidden debts now being accumulated in the form of
long-term contracts with private companies hired to operate prisons, schools and
more.
Another answer is that privatization is a way of getting
rid of public employees, who do have a habit of unionizing and tend to lean
Democratic in any case.
But the main answer, surely, is to follow the money.
Never mind what privatization does or doesn’t do to state budgets; think
instead of what it does for both the campaign coffers and the personal finances
of politicians and their friends. As more and more government functions get
privatized, states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both political
contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for
getting government business. Are the corporations capturing the politicians, or
the politicians capturing the corporations? Does it matter?
You gotta read the whole thing.
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