From The Metro (17 June, page 14):
Why are our privatisation-obsessed politicians so happy for our assets to be sold off to state-owned companies from other countries?
Richard, London.
Genius. I wish I'd thought of that.
Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 42:1-17
7 hours ago
10 comments:
LOL, especially when those companies use the proceeds to fund old age benefits. We sell of the family silver, then dump the liability on the working population...
This is done because they run public sector enterprises profitably and we can't.It involves in British business/political parlance "picking winners" which is always inconceivable, although the State can rig the market so they do win.
Not only that, DBCR, but the Right believes that anything that makes a profit shouldn't be in the public sector.
M, that's the general plan.
DBC, but why do our pol's rig the market so that some other government can win?
B, agreed. And if it's loss making, shut it down.
Other governments have managed to rack up big sovereign wealth funds and have loads of money to invest and make a profit.The latest seem to be the Chinese who are far better at running our infrastructure than the cream of the Uk's expensively educated managerial talent apparently.
There is absolutely no reason why a nationalised industry should n't run at a profit but it is part of the British prejudice system that public sector provision is poor value for money( though the NHS is tops for value for money); privately owned housing is best (though it has been proved by Prof Oswald to increase unemployment)and that industry needs cheap labour ( though cheap labour immigrants have not created a production boom in this country).
DBC, those are good examples. And 'profit' in the public sector is not really the point, the point is 'value for money'.
This value for money concept is a bit tricky: it would be very good value for money if all the energy companies were nationalised and made consistent losses by supplying dirt cheap energy for industrial and domestic customers.
DBC, no it's not tricky at all.
The actual costs of production are something measurable, that should be kept low in all cases. The difference between the unregulated selling price and costs is monopoly profit - so who should get it? Foreign government, UK taxpayers/citizens or UK electricity users?
A reasonable balance has to be struck, but given that most taxpayers are also electricity users and vice versa, it doesn't matter if you get the balance a bit wrong as it tends to cancel out on both sides.
Overall, it is better to favour taxpayers/citizens and have higher prices. (this is certainly much better for the environment).
MW Not that much good for industry (to have high energy prices).
I do not give a flying f*ck for the sainted taxpayers who do not pay tax on their unearned capital gains from living in their houses that governments zealously organise for them.Any organisation that looks after the taxpayers only in Britain tends to be respectable True Blue Neo fascist.
DBC, realistically, what industry pays for electricity is a small fraction of what they currently pay in VAT, NIC, PAYE, corporation tax and so on.
So having replaced all taxes on output and employment with LVT, maybe there is not that much in it; but there are still the competing interests of paying off the national debt, dishing it out as Citizen's Income and so on to think about.
So for "taxpayer" substitute "Citizens income recipient"?
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