government ownership is inefficiency caused by scale. Both examples are limited to cities, which is a far cry in scope from the national health care system you promote.
If health care systems were limited to cities and towns... I'd be upf or it, but once you throw in state or national systems, there's going to be a lot of money lost and poor decisions made to bureaucracy.
It seems that free market systems, on a large scale, are better able to control costs and react quicker.
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General discussion
Commentary: Sometimes government does do it better!
(Chronicle login: semods4@yahoo.com; pw = speakeasy)
>> MYTH: The private sector is always more efficient than government.
Reality: Are you kidding?
Privatizing the state's social services system by hiring a company called Accenture has been a total debacle, resulting in the state having to offer $1,800 retention bonuses to 4,800 state workers.
Plans to lay off 1,900 have been scaled back. Now the state hopes to trim its staff by only 900, if Accenture ever figures out how to do its job. [examples of major problems follow]....
But what really has me incredulous at today's almost biblical belief in the superiority of the private sector is my electricity bill....
But purely on a dollars-and-cents basis, I'm not nearly as crazy as those of you who worship at the altar of free markets.
As it happens, we don't have to talk in purely theological terms. We have data.
Two major Texas cities own their own electric utilities: Austin and San Antonio. Austin charges its customers far less than any of the corporations serving Houston, but San Antonio's City Public Service charges about 10 percent less than Austin.
The April CPS bills for 1,200 kwh were $85.41. That's almost exactly half of what the cheapest power would cost me in Houston.... <<
And they'd do a lot better running health care, too!
-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!
Discussion is locked
9 Posts
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are often monopolies set up by government; not free market entities at all
Sheesh! You sure do like to stack the deck!
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picking people to replace it. Gee! I wonder why that is.
The last I heard, the electric utilities are highly regulated, and public facilities are highly subsidized. That could have something to do with a difference in rates.
BTW, 'The private sector is always more efficient than government' is called a straw man. I'm not aware of this being advocated by conservatives. Government does have some legitimate functions like defense, police, etc.
Have you ever taken a long trip on Amtrak? That would rattle your presuppositions.
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The legislation passed a couple years earlier, after a massive campaign by a couple local Texas companies you may perhaps have heard of -- Enron and Dynagy.
-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!
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one deregulation may take some time to have an effect if the gov't isn't still sticking a wrench in the works. It's not like turning on a switch.
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... see my second post below. From DK's own article, the public utility is getting "perks" that would be loudly slammed as "tax breaks for Big Energy" if they were offered to the private sector.
Evie 
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... that municipal utilities can be well managed. But, as EdH points out, such is often subsidized.
There's more to utilities, BTW, than the $$/KWH. How about service? Length of power outages, etc.? The private sector is often beleaguered by lawsuits, etc., where the public entity would not be. There's also the balance between the tax base and electric rates. You may pay less on the latter, but lose some on the former so pay more in property taxes. I don't know specifics, but this is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, or at least specialty apples to regular delicious apples.
Anyway, electric rates should be higher! LOL. When the costs are distributed more evenly among all users rather than usage based, there is less incentive to save on electric use.!
By the way, you're now mimicking Rob's annoying habit of posting inflammatory excerpts from commentators. While you cannot be accused of making the statements, I'm not sure this is the kind of post Lee had in mind re: zingers, and I'm pretty sure this isn't in the spirit of Moderators leading by example!
But purely on a dollars-and-cents basis, I'm not nearly as crazy as those of you who worship at the altar of free markets. 
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When they borrow money to build new plants and other facilities, they do so by selling tax-free municipal bonds, which let them get interest rates significantly lower than corporations get.
What's more, they don't have to spend much on marketing. If you want electricity in the San Antonio area, they're your only choice.
So the author couldn't be quite so self-congratulatory about buying the most expensive energy he can because he's doing his good deed for the environment if he lived in SA. Furthermore, if a private company was given these perks it would be ''subsidizing the big energy companies''. Why is it not evil for them to do it for a public utility?
In the wake of the energy crisis in the 1970s, they diversified their power sources. They built coal-fired plants and bought into the South Texas Project nuclear plant. (They recently increased their share to 40 percent.)
The underlined portion may well be the largest factor in the cost of their energy. Nuclear power is not considered ''Green Energy'' yet is one of the cheapest. To bad we've all but abandoned this type of power
It's finally getting the long-deserved second look.Incidentally, I used to have a friend that owned homes in Waterford CT the Millstone nuke plant(s) are. One of the three units closed and is being decommissioned, and I think the plant was sold to another utility since, but at that time, his property tax mil rate was considerably lower than neighboring towns because of the impact of Millstone on the local tax base. I just looked it up (http://www.courant.com/classified/realestate/hc-class-real-millrates0501,0,4623522.htmlstory). Waterford's mill rate is still one of the lowest at 18.84 -- compare that to New London (of Kelo fame) which is right next door at 25.34 (29.88 for the ''city'' proper, and a whopping 33.77 for personal property). For a $200,000 home, that's $3768 in Waterford, and $5068 in New London ''outskirts''. A difference of $1300 a year.
So while Millstone doesn't pour revenues directly to the town, the taxes it pays save all property owners (and residents by extension) a considerable amount.
Meanwhile, Groton, which is the next town down the Sound, has a considerable industrial tax base AND public utilities has a base mill rate of 22.95 (depending on what other subdistrict you live in there, you are subject to about another 4.5-5.9 for the major ''blue collar neighborhood'' fire districts and 0.75 tacked on for sewer -- so let's conservatively average that out to 28.00). So despite whatever savings the consumers of Groton utilities realize, they are paying about $1830 MORE in real estate taxes on that $200K home.
And all that needs to happen for these taxes to go up and up is for the reassessment period to roll around and your property value to have appreciated. You can't ''conserve'' on this like you could with electric rates! I've seen where mill rates were increased when the real estate market was in a slump at re-assessment time. I have yet to see where the mill rates were decreased when the real estate market was in a boom. Taxes just go up and up and up. The energy usage (and thus direct revenues contributed to the coffers) is going to increase slightly with population and perhaps new industry, but the bigger savings to the taxpayer are with the property taxes industry pays because these go up and down for the industry as they do for the residential property owner.
Now there's no way to make exact direct comparisons here, but it's clear that cheaper electric rates are only one piece of the intertwined puzzle.
BTW -- WOW! have property taxes gone up in CT recently!! It's not nearly as bad as many areas of NY or NJ that are "bedroom communities" for NYC, but it's pretty substantial. We use no more goods and services than we did 5 years ago, and our mill rate has remained fairly consistent, but we now pay about 60% more in property taxes today than we did a decade ago, and much of that increase has been the last few years
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