Theoretical question: If all non-military and non-debt social programs were gradually phased out...

[steve2470]

over a period of 10 years, what would happen ? Would the vaunted "private sector" pick up the slack, so to speak ? What would happen to our elderly ? What would happen to education ?

Mind you, I am NOT advocating for this, but it seems to me from some of the arguments of non-liberals and non-centrists, that they want this to happen. Why ? Because anything government is "bad". I don't think the private sector would pick up the slack. Even charities for children, the most sacred of charities, have to solicit for money. What do you think ?

[Sapphire Blue]

1. The death rate would skyrocket as the rich get even richer.

[havocmom]

2. Think about all those WAY overpaid CEOs.

Things would get worse. Privatizing some things just sends $$ to a small group and makes a lot of workers vulnerable, lowers the public coffers and basically sucks.

It would be a Dickens nightmare.

[atreides1]

3. The Private Sector might pick up the slack

If there was a profit to be made, if not then the elderly would die and children would perish.

But as long as that pesky government isn't involved, then it's alright with those groups you mentioned.

[liberal N proud]

4. That was supposed to be the "faith based" bullshit bu$h pushed through

his first non-elected term.
The right wing sell was that the churches could distribute the aid to those in need and relieve the government of all that expense of managing the system.

Did it work?

[steve2470]

5. nope

Churches, mosques, synagogues and other spiritual centers are good up to a point. However, I don't think they can fill the void IF government went away.

[Iris]

6. It baffles me that people think "business" or "the private sector" is actually efficient.

I've worked in both business and government entities. Most businesses are not exactly pillars of efficiency.

[TexasProgresive]

7. The private sector would pick up the slack by building work

houses and other such schemes like in Victorian times.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. Let's look at history for a possible answer

And let's look at education. The Northwest Ordinance of 1789 required that one portion of each township be set aside for educational purposes-the school would be built on a part of it, and the rest of the acreage rented out to pay for the school maintenance and teacher. This plan was followed in the territory of the Old Northwest, which is what is known as the Midwest today.

There was no such legislation governing education in the South in the new territories of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, or Arkansas. And you didn't see education for the working class folk, known then as "poor whites". In fact, the planter class voted down attempts at starting public education in the region, preferring an ignorant underclass they could manipulate through lies and racism.

By the time of the Civil War, the contrast in educational levels between the North and South were quite obvious. I've read numerous accounts of Yankees marvelling over the fact that so many Southerners couldn't even write their own name, whereas most in the Army of the Tennessee, which was made up mostly of Midwesterners, boasted about an 80-90% basic literacy.

In my own family, I can see this. The branch that moved from NC to TN to IL were illiterate; only when they reached IL did the children go to school. The branch that came from NY to WI to IL were quite literate and left rather charming letters about life on the frontier.

[pitohui]

9. the elderly would die unless you could afford to house them in your basement

conservatives hate their parents, i've talked to plenty who have told me outright that they don't care if their parent's social security is taken away because they would never, ever help them with money or give them a place to live even if it was so it wouldn't affect them financially

they really do not care about others, you wonder why so many of them have kids, since presumably their kids will have the same inability to love them when they're old and ugly

it seems to be a normal human instinct to hate the old and the physically less attractive, there are constant threads hurling abuse at people for less than pretty even at DU, a progressive board

i suspect that many conservatives would actually hail the massive die-off as a good thing for the country and the world

health care is really more and more only for the rich now, soon education will be the same if they get their way, you see a rich fuckwit isn't happy to be rich unless at the same time he can grind his boot on somebody who has less, they get no joy from their own existence, they get it only by comparing and feeling superior to others

my opinion anyway

they may try to quote the bible and such, but their real motives are hate of self (hence endless need for comparisons and competition to prop off sagging egos) and hate of other people

[rucky]

10. Two things:

1) Private, for-profit companies contracted to perform public service can and will maximize their profits by cutting corners on the quality of services provided.

2) Private, for-profit corporations run on supply and demand. When times are good, production increases to meet demand. Public-service agencies run the opposite way: When times are BAD, production increases to meet demand.

Their interests are not compatible, which is why we separate public and private in the first place.

[JDPriestly]

11. I did fundraising for a nonprofit serving homeless men.

The private sector would pick up the tab for the projects that really "feel good," like buying leg braces or prosthetics for kids. If you do that, you get to take a picture of the child's first steps and the big smile the child has after he or she learns to walk. Private donors would not fund the less photogenic, less newsworthy projects like funding half-way houses for felons on parole. Private money goes to the most attractive projects, not to really need or necessary unattractive projects. There is lots of money for scholarships for excellent students, but less for the fair to middlin' kid with a good heart who may make a really valuable contribution to society as a teacher or a dental technician but who doesn't have extremely high grades or SAT scores. The kid who isn't so brilliant needs subsidized loans and low tuition to get through school.

[tjwash]

12. You ever see the movie "Mad Max"?

Outside the clean safe razor wired and armed guarded gated communities that the upper 10-20 percent lived, the rest of the country would resemble the libertarian wet-dream that "Mad Max" was.

[endarkenment]

13. I'd phase on out of here too.

What sort of society would that be?

[shraby]

14. You can go to the early 1800s history

and answer your own question. Even then, many cities/townships took care of the widows but for the most part, people were on their own.