Government vs Corporations

First off, for any consistent readers, let me say that our old dog is getting deaf, so yesterday we got two puppies for him to teach how to be good puppies while we still have him.  Thus, I’m a day late.

Be that as it may, with the political discussions going on this week regarding government, government services, privatizing government services, etc., I would first like to share an illustrative incident that took place when I was still in office.  We had a very interesting law suit filed against the county, but on an issue which was extremely rare.  As a result, our county counsel’s office contracted with a private law firm specializing in that particular issue.  There immediately was an outcry over how much this was going to cost the county, etc., etc.  So our county counsel ran some numbers on how much it would cost to keep an attorney on staff at all times for such a rare event, and how much it was going to cost the county to contract out.  Of course, it was much less to contract out than to hire a full time attorney specializing in something for which she might only be required for every 10-12 years.  I recognize that there are times when it becomes cost effective to privatize a government service.

Generally speaking, however, this is not the case.  For run-of-the-mill government services, it is much more cost effective to provide those services in-house, so to speak.  And for one very good reason.  A private business is in the business to make a profit.  So on top of paying for the actual service provided, government must then provide the profit on top of what it would have cost government to do it in the first place. 

Government, however, ought not to be in the business of routinely providing business with a profit.  That is not in the government job description.  Government is in the business of providing needed services to the people in exchange for tax dollars.  These needed services must be provided as efficiently and as economically as possible, of course.  That, in my opinion, goes without saying.

Starting with Ronald Reagan and his famous statement, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’,” there has been a constant drumbeat against government and against public employee unions.  Stop and consider this for a minute.  The only people or entities who could possibly benefit from this are business people or corporations.  The general public certainly has not benefitted.

What we, as citizens, are faced with if this proposal is carried out to its logical conclusion is that we will be paying taxes to go to providing a profit to businesses, along with a lower level of service for ourselves.  The reasons the lower levels of service are automatic is that businesses tend in increase their profit margins as much as possible.  And a lower level of service is one way to achieve that goal.

Now I’m going to play with the puppies.