You can't privatize welfare in a recession...duh!

10 posts / 0 new

Sun, 2009-02-08 05:35

Doug

The government's flagship policy to revolutionise welfare by paying private companies to find jobs for the unemployed was in crisis last night as firms said there were too many people out of work - and too few vacancies - to make it viable....Under the current contracts on offer, worth a total of more than £1bn over five years, firms and voluntary sector organisations chosen in a tendering process would be paid 20% "up front" as a service fee and the remaining 80% when they placed people in work. Now many are demanding the service fee element be raised to 50%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/feb/08/labour-welfare-jobs-plan

You can't make money on putting people back to work when that's impossible so it's not a surprise that nobody wants to try.

Sun, 2009-02-08 14:38

jas

You can't privatize welfare at any time - and save money. And if you're not saving money, what's the point?

The whole concept of privatizing services like welfare violates one of the main justifications for privatization: that it saves the government money. In fact, in both Ontario and the U.S., it was found that government was spending more on welfare than if it managed it itself. And the increase in government expenditure was not going toward welfare benefits but to the company that was administering it.

This is what I mean by neo-conservatism/neo-liberalism not even pretending anymore to offer sound economic arguments for their slate of idiotic reforms. It's anti-economic, anti-common sense to privatize government services that are more efficiently and economically handled by government. It's for these services, as well as roads, schools, health care and such, that government exists. That's why we have government. That's why we pay taxes.

Sun, 2009-02-08 16:19

remind

I concur Jas, but yet here in BC we have the same types of private enterprise businesses paid to look for work for those on income assistance.

The companies get paid, by the government, and so do the ngo's that advertise for the businesses who are getting paid to find work. Plus the businesses themselves, that hire said income assistance employees, get paid to hire them. 4 streams of revenue going from taxes, whereas there should only be 1, the person's income assistance.

And that is not even noting that the actual case managers now work for, in some areas, a private company, who contracts the income assistance files for certain ares.

Mon, 2009-02-09 13:48

It's Me D

jas wrote:
The whole concept of privatizing services like welfare violates one of the main justifications for privatization: that it saves the government money. In fact, in both Ontario and the U.S., it was found that government was spending more on welfare than if it managed it itself. And the increase in government expenditure was not going toward welfare benefits but to the company that was administering it.

The old story of privatization; there's narry an example to be found where subsidizing private profit makes public service provision more efficient. Parasites.

Fri, 2009-02-13 01:53

mybabble

It just doesn't work as was reading just the other day where a couple judges from the USA got kick backs in the millions from private companies for putting kids in private detention despite not having crimes worthy of the incarceration. Its with out a doubt this is more the norm when private takes over government run facilaties.

Fri, 2009-02-13 02:01

mybabble

remind wrote:

I concur Jas, but yet here in BC we have the same types of private enterprise businesses paid to look for work for those on income assistance.

The companies get paid, by the government, and so do the ngo's that advertise for the businesses who are getting paid to find work. Plus the businesses themselves, that hire said income assistance employees, get paid to hire them. 4 streams of revenue going from taxes, whereas there should only be 1, the person's income assistance.

And that is not even noting that the actual case managers now work for, in some areas, a private company, who contracts the income assistance files for certain ares.

Here is a big truth about those agencies as clients talk of how its just one big scam man as clients sign them self in and sign them selves out as nothing is done to help these clients find jobs that any idiot couldn't do themselves. Also proven that no jobs found by agencies as numbers show people who found jobs found them on their own. The biggest welfare payments go to Big Business as Liberals pass out Billions to Big Business.

Fri, 2009-02-13 02:11

Kindrid

Quote:
The old story of privatization; there's narry an example to be found where subsidizing private profit makes public service provision more efficient. Parasites.

Ah, not true at all. BTW, Why can't government employees be considered parasites?

Quote:

Three recent surveys by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)4 and World Bank5 have provided equally conclusive findings. In total the surveys reviewed over 50 published
empirical studies examining hundreds of privatisations. Few issues in economics have been subjectto such exhaustive empirical investigation and provided such clear results.

The balance of evidence conclusively indicates that:

• private firms tend to be more efficient than their state-owned counterparts, especially in competitive industries;

• privatisation of an SOE(state-owned enterprises) is likely to lead to improvements in the efficiency of the enterprise andto a more open and competitive market, to the benefit of consumers, taxpayers and the economyas a whole.

http://www.nzbr.org.nz/documents/policy/policy-2004/PB_No5.pdf

Fri, 2009-02-13 09:48

jas

Kindrid, are you kidding?

It's not super radical to suggest that private enterprise "tends to be more efficient" in commercial enterprise. That may be so in a large number of cases but it also depends on how efficiency is defined. The question here though is how does privatization work for non-commercial enterprise - a government service that cannot, by its very definition, produce profit. What are the savings to the taxpayer in the privatization of welfare administration? And that are not simply shifted to some other area of social cost?

Fri, 2009-02-13 12:39

contrarianna

"Kindred, are you kidding?...."

Unfortunately, no. The are opinions entirely in keeping with the link to
the big-oil fed global-warming deniers over at the New Zealand Business Round Table corporate lobby:

"Its ideology is quite simple: we're all essentially greedy and we should be free to make as much money as we can. If we exploit others in the process - well, that's just the free market at work..."

"The far-right fringe loonies who infest parts of the Business Roundtable and the Act party are true believers, but with money. Over the next few months, we will see a litany of so-called academic research releases - many of them funded by the Business Roundtable - parading right-wing policies and ideas to influence public opinion by cloaking their nonsense in apparent academic credibility."

New Zealand Herald

Fri, 2009-02-13 18:42

#10

laine lowe laine lowe's picture

If private enterprise is so freaking efficient, why do they need the taxpayer bail outs they are receiving lately?

The neo-con dream is an absolute failure. And it seems that our remedies are only serving the extension of that delusion. There is no job creation or trickle down effect. The only thing that was accomplished was making the wealthiest in our society wealthier. Tax subsidized wealth creation is an insult and a recipe for further disaster.