J. Clarke said:
Greg G. wrote:
And a recent interesting story about IBM privatization v. "socialism":
http://www.indystar.com/article/2009...tract+with+IBM
Unfortunately, it is in regards to welfare services, but it could be
there is a lesson in there somewhere...
Business is not designed to give away money--the failed concept is that you
can help people by giving them money without also giving them incentives to
work and the skills necessary to obtain work (which are different from the
skills necessary to _do_ work).
Nonsense. A properly run business should be able to excel at any task
assigned - whether manufacturing or disbursement of funds and
services. If not, it should fail. In this case, IBM failed to meet the
standards of even a reputedly grossly ineffective government entity.
My point was not about welfare, but about the efficiency and
effectiveness of government vs. private enterprise. I'm not about to
defend the current state of affairs with regards to the dirt bags in
public office, nor the assortment of profiteering corporations and
their drooling stockholders who do no work at all, short of counting
their returns on investment. Simply pointing out a single recent case
where privatization didn't work - and there are plenty more.
Privatized prisons and parole services have many in law enforcement
and justice up in arms. Companies made big promises, but have utterly
failed to meet either performance objectives or efficiency goals. Most
consider the move a huge mistake. The government was considered
inefficient, but the private companies have turned out to be, as many
expected, profiteers whose primary objective was to extort money under
the color of law while providing no services in the public interest.
In other words, they proved even worse than big, bad government.
As for the welfare aspect, I don't disagree with your point. But where
are you going to employ them? Without jobs people cannot work,
without cash flow, employers cannot hire. The jobs that once provided
income to the poor and uneducated, such as textiles, steel, and much
manufacturing, have been shipped offshore. Even agriculture has been
taken over by AgriCorp and machinery. NAFTA killed off Mexican farmers
ability to profit from farming and resulted in a huge influx of
immigrant workers looking for income. So they end up being exploited
at meat packing plants and farms thereby pushing even more US citizens
out of jobs they would otherwise hate, but do to make a living.
So what do you propose the unemployed do for a living? The right
opposes abortion, and you're never going to stop people from having
sex, so the problem simply grows and grows. Nothing productive is done
on any front. All I see and hear is more rhetoric, vitriol and failed
ideology. The stupid breed en masse and the right screams, "But what
about the unborn children?" Bull****. These morons put more thought
into breeding dogs and horses than they do bettering the human race.
Personally, if some idiot wants to speed at 110 MPH and not wear a
seat belt while talking on a freaking cell phone, I say let him. It's
Darwin in action - they are unwittingly saving us from ourselves. Kids
should be protected from ignorance, adults, not so much.
Those that have want even more, and those that have nothing harbor no
hope of extricating themselves from the miserable lives they lead. To
the newly born this is no longer the land of opportunity, but a land
of corporate fuel screws and impoverished consumers of imported crap.
Unless, of course, you are born into the aristocracy/plutocracy. Even
the few that break out of poverty through education are ultimately
saddled with debt which takes 20+ years to pay off - if then, in this
present economic situation. We can spend a real 32% of the Federal
budget on military profiteers plus another 18% on the debt from past
military spending but we shun science, education and birth control. We
then export jobs and factories en masse to a communist nation while
amassing trillion dollar trade deficits. Smart!
I suppose the short of it is, we're f'd. The US is a failure. Happy?
Greg G.