3 ms·
Tax money is not necessarily wasted. There are plenty of places where outsourcing the work is the economical thing to do. The question is whether or not in a pa
by jonathankoren 10y ago
Tax money is not necessarily wasted. There are plenty of places where outsourcing the work is the economical thing to do. The question is whether or not in a particular case if the outsourcing contract is economical. A blanket argument that tax money shouldn't go to private individuals makes no sense in an economy that isn't completely nationalized, since the government quite literally doesn't do everything.
While I don't know the particulars of the Autobahn privatization controversy, I do know about toll booth and parking meter privatization in the United States, and yes, they tend to be bad deals for the tax payers, because the government wants a quick hit of money, in exchange for multiple times that money over the long term. Take for instance, Chicago's parking meter privatization, where the city got $1.15 billion in exchange for all the revenue from parking meters over the next 75 years In 2015, the meters brought in $156 million, so we're talking at least 7x.[0]
[0] http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/parking-meters-garages-took-in-156m-but-city-wont-see-a-cent/ http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/parking-meters-garages-took...