Why sell what we can share?

The tolls result was upheld.  Nobody is surprised. It's still a depressing thing to think about.

The result was  partially due to bad information.  A lot of voters mistakenly believed voting for the tolls would ensure continued ferry service.  But the tolls and ferries had been decoupled by the legislature several months beforehand.  This was reported in the media but I don't think it was given the emphasis it deserved especially considering the fact that toll proponents were still attempting to sell their case based on a falsehood.

But even among voters who understood what they were voting for, too many voted in favor of the tolls based on some pretend-world theory that one piece of infrastructure vital to a metro and state-wide transportation system should pay for its own maintenance. We all benefit from the fact that there is a bridge there. There's no reason why only some of us should bear the brunt of its cost. Anyway that's not what the toll money even does in reality. In any case, if the tolls are ended, the bridge isn't going to collapse into the river.  It is federally mandated that the structure be maintained.  The money to do that would have been found.

Or at least it should have been.  Unfortunately our default policy response in these matters has favored selling the things we should be sharing.  Last week the President's State of the Union address called for what sounded like a new infrastructure repair initiative. Although, on further examination, he may be proposing something very different.

"So, tonight, I propose a ``Fix-It-First'' program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country. And to make sure taxpayers don't shoulder the whole burden, I'm also proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America that attracts private capital to upgrade what our businesses need most: modern ports to move our goods; modern pipelines to withstand a storm; modern schools worthy of our children,” he said. 
 

Couched as a way to save taxpayers’ money, the President actually just dangled a considerable carrot in front of corporations: construction grants and partial ownership of nearly all of the United States’ infrastructure. Public private partnerships are essentially a stepping stone to full privatization of our roads, bridges, railways, power grids and--yes--even our public schools. 

The implications of this proposal are so scary that they even startled a Fox News reporter who commented, “It’s unnerving to hear the suggestion that the best way to guard against corporate excess is by crafting ever-closer public/private partnerships.” 

As a concept, public-private partnerships can be considered a metaphor for any type of privatization: they sound smart in a capitalist society, but they’re never what they’re cracked up to be.

No they aren't. In fact, they are usually con jobs.  As we turn over more of our public goods to private interests, they become profitable for the owners, of course, but much more expensive for the rest of us.  

The chart below shows what happened. When Medicare was run traditionally, overhead was fairly low and getting lower (dashed blue line). Then private plans were introduced and total overhead costs started to flatten (black line). By 1997, total overhead was about 1.4 percentage points higher than traditional Medicare alone. In that year, Medicare Advantage was introduced, and by 2005 the gap had widened to 2.1 percentage points. Then privately run prescription drug plans were introduced, and now the gap is 4.5 percentage points.

In the case of prescription drugs, it's possible that higher overhead is justified by the lower overall program costs we get from having a lot of competing plans. In the case of Medicare Advantage, it's just pure waste. We have higher overhead and higher overall costs, with very little benefit to show for it. As Sullivan says, this should "long ago have triggered inquiries within Congress and the US health policy community as to whether the higher administrative costs associated with the growing privatization of Medicare are justified."

Here's the chart Drum is talking about.



And, as we've mentioned many times, the same movement is afoot with regard to what was formerly public education. What was once considered a crucial piece of the social contract where we all shared the costs and benefits of an educated and informed population, has given way to a profit center for management companies, a tool of social stratification, a cudgel against organized labor, not to mention a cesspool of corruption and abuse far worse than the neglected system it was meant to replace.

The argument over whether the investment in and benefit from essential aspects of public welfare (health, education, infrastructure, information) should be shared by all of us or hoarded by an increasingly isolated elite among us is the most fundamental problem of maintaining a vital democracy.    But so long as President Obama and Mayor Landrieu and other leaders on the somewhat liberal-flavored side of our politics continue to cede this argument it is doomed to remain an unsolved problem.

In the meantime, have your dollar ready when you cross the bridge.

Update: I buried a link in all of that which really should get more attention.  Please see this Bill Moyers interview with Susan Crawford on how news and information is becoming increasingly limited from public access.

SUSAN CRAWFORD: Us, all of us. What's happened is that these enormous telecommunications companies, Comcast and Time Warner on the wired side, Verizon and AT&T on the wireless side, have divided up markets, put themselves in the position where they're subject to no competition and no oversight from any regulatory authority. And they're charging us a lot for internet access and giving us second class access. This is a lot like the electrification story from the beginning of the 20th century. Initially electricity was viewed as a luxury. So when F.D.R. came in, 90 percent of farms didn't have electricity in America at the same time that kids in New York City were playing with electric toys. And F.D.R. understood how important it was for people all over America to have the dignity and self-respect and sort of cultural and social and economic connection of an electrical outlet in their home. So he made sure to take on the special interests that were controlling electricity then who had divided up markets and consolidated just the way internet guys have today, he made sure that we made this something that every American had.

You read a lot these days about the "digital future" of journalism.  We could be talking about a future where where technology liberates us and democratizes information in a way that levels our stratified social order.  The decade or so I've spent fiddling around with the internets has taught me that ordinary people tend to be a lot smarter, funnier, and just better than what the corporate media model assumes them to be. 

Unfortunately,  the model now coming into dominance discounts this and treats us cynically as consumers; passive recipients of what we're fed rather than active participants in the public discourse. What this implies is a future where the few who can afford to keep up with public affairs will be allowed to follow.  My impression is only a distinct minority among our professional journalists themselves even grasp this. 

Upperdate: Check out how Mitch's signature "public-private partnership" initiative is doing now.