A New Gameplan for Taking Down Privatizers

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:


A New Gameplan for Taking Down Privatizers
JULY 13, 2014

The outsourcing of public services to private go-getters has concentrated wealth the whole world over. The best answer to that concentration? That just may be new forms of public ownership.

By Sam Pizzigati


Analysts at the OECD, the Paris-based research agency, have just shared a grim prediction: If current trends “prevail,” all developed nations will show by 2060 “the same level of inequality as currently experienced by the United States.”

If we let those current trends continue, that conclusion sounds about right. But why on earth should we let those trends continue? The trends that have made our world so unequal don’t reflect some inevitable unfolding of globalization. They reflect wrong-headed political decisions. We can make different decisions.

Take privatization. Over the past four decades, governments all around the world have chosen to privatize a broad array of public services. These privatizations have generated vast new concentrations of private wealth, among them the $75 billion fortune of Carlos Slim, the world’s second-richest single individual.

Our privatizers are still seeking new worlds to conquer. In the United States, for instance, they’re aggressively going after public education, a near $.7 trillion annual jackpot. But privatizers today are increasingly facing as much resistance as opportunity. All over the world, publics are beginning to reject the privatization mantra. The privatizers, turns out, have a problem with their pitch.

“Privatization,” as the Guardian’s Seumas Milne put it last week, “isn’t working.” ...................(more)

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