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Governments don't pay for infrastructure by saving up surplus tax revenue in a piggy bank. They take out loans to pay for it, same as the water companies do. Th

by qcnguy 1y ago

Governments don't pay for infrastructure by saving up surplus tax revenue in a piggy bank. They take out loans to pay for it, same as the water companies do. The UK pays around 8% of its spending on interest payments and that's rising rapidly, despite the fact it can print money. British water companies are in lots of debt because they aren't really private. They're forced to spend huge sums to repair Victorian-era infrastructure whilst the government sets the prices they're allowed to charge. Decades of populist left or centre-left governments have kept the prices artificially low whilst requiring investment, resulting in a huge accumulation of debt. This is exactly what would have also happened if the water companies were not privatized, so the fake "privatization" is a red herring. It's the expected outcome of price controls, not whether the utilities are owned by the state or not.

happymellon 1y ago
You really twist yourself around here. But this? > Decades of populist left or centre-left governments have kept the prices artificially low whilst requiring investment, resulting in a huge accumulation of debt. Bloody Tories, the whole problem isn't that they were in charge for 32 years from 1979-2024, it's the 13 years of Blair. They have been powerless to stop the spooky Left and fix the pipes before the water was privatised (or anything afterwards, because obviously it's still the Left)!
- qcnguy 1y ago
  The Tories are a centre-left party. That's why they lost the support of conservative voters at the last election and are now in the doldrums, with much of their base having defected to Reform.
  - ahartmetz 1y ago
    Maybe they are now (I doubt it), but they surely weren't under Thatcher.
    - qcnguy 1y ago
      Correct. But by "decades" I meant in the 40 years since Thatcher.
    - cma 1y ago
      Water was privatized in the 90s after Thatcher.
      - happymellon 1y ago
        The pipes that "are Victorian and should have been replaced before privatisation" were around before then. They have had plenty of time to replace them.
    - overfeed 1y ago
      The Tories decided to flank Farage from the right during the last elections. Calling them "centre-left" is a joke.
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    You must think that the lib dems are now more conservative than them. Bullocks. All of your argument is bullocks
  - happymellon 1y ago
    > The Tories are a centre-left party. Oh boy. That's funny. > much of their base having defected to Reform. Yes, they found a party they will say the quiet bits out loud, so they don't feel as uncomfortable being bigots and racists.
  - p1necone 1y ago
    I was hopeful that the eventual endgame of right wingers blaming everything on the left when the right was in charge for literal decades would be for them to eventually maybe consider that that wasn't the problem. Turns out I was wrong, all it takes is to no-true-scotsman everything into the "bad wrong left wing" bucket on the quest to move the overton window ever rightwards. Hilarious. The mental gymnastics knows no bounds.
  - Podrod 1y ago
    >The Tories are a centre-left party. You honestly believe this? If so: Jesus H. Christ!
OtherShrezzing 1y ago
>Decades of populist left or centre-left governments have kept the prices artificially low whilst requiring investment The overwhelming majority of people would disagree that the Conservative Party can be described as "left". Since 1979, the Conservatives have been in power for all but 14 years.
- qcnguy 1y ago
  Their voters obviously don't agree. Not only have they defected to Reform on a massive scale, but Reform recruiting former Tories like Dorries is hugely controversial within the party base, exactly because Tories are viewed as being too left wing.
  - 4ggr0 1y ago
    that's like saying the CDU in germany is left because CDU voters started voting AfD. people flocking to an even more conservative party does not mean that the original party is somehow left.
    - qcnguy 1y ago
      Good example. The CDU is in a coalition with the left wing parties and refuses to work with the AfD in any way, not even winning votes with their votes, on the basis that the AfD is right wing and thus inherently evil. So the CDU is indeed not a recognizably right wing party anymore, and has suffered mass defections for that very reason. If it were, it would enter into coalitions with other right wing parties rather than being taking orders from a partly literally called Die Linke.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        It's entirely possible to have a right-wing party that still takes the stance "we don't join coalitions with the Nazis".
      - triceratops 1y ago
        > on the basis that the AfD is right wing and thus inherently evil I thought it was on the basis of the whole Nazi thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#Neo-Nazi_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#Neo-Na... Everyone except Nazis agrees that Nazis are inherently evil.
scythe 1y ago
>This is exactly what would have also happened if the water companies were not privatized The post office in the United States is not privatized and yet has been able to set prices in a way that sustains the business for centuries. You can't simply assume that all public entities will ignore fiscal reality. In fact you may run into the opposite problem: when a utility is public, their debts appear on the government balance sheet and legislators are responsible for them. When it's spun off as a quasi-private monopoly, the government can impose debt on the utility without appearing to increase the public debt.
- qcnguy 1y ago
  Yes, in theory nationalized companies can set prices rationally and turn a profit. In practice they rarely manage this for long because sooner or later a populist comes along and forces them to lower prices in order to win votes. It's not just water where the UK has a problem with this. Transport for London has also been forced to underprice its services for years by London's socialist mayor, it's a big part of how he won votes, meaning they've been building up a huge tech debt backlog. He clearly expects that the rest of the country will eventually bail London out and he'll be seen as the hero. The US is a very right wing country. It's politicians are better able to avoid populist price controls. Maybe with Mamdani that's now changing.
  - danans 1y ago
    > It's not just water where the UK has a problem with this. Transport for London has also been forced to underprice its services for years by London's socialist mayor In the US we have a problem with fantastically underpricing public roads. We don't expect their books to break even, much less generate a profit. Meanwhile everyone asks why train systems are not profitable. > The US is a very right wing country. Yeah, at least compared with most of Europe. > It's politicians are better able to avoid populist price controls. You didn't notice when the current president (somewhat successfully) bullied retailers into swallowing tariff-caused price increases, so they wouldn't damage his popularity? That almost seems right-wing socialist.
    - 1y ago
autoexec 1y ago
> This is exactly what would have also happened if the water companies were not privatized This clearly isn't always true and when it does happen the public has the ability to require the transparency from their government to catch it happening quickly and the ability to hold the elected officials responsible for it accountable by voting them out and replacing them. Private corporations don't allow the level of transparency the public needs and aren't accountable to the public either. Maybe the government could work out some deal that gives the public the right to put webcams in every meeting/board room of the private company, force their bookkeeping to be published to the internet, allow the public to request internal email and other communications, require independent audits/reports, and grant the public the ability to fire and replace any and all employees or executives at the private company who fail to do their jobs, but even then you'd still have the problem that private companies demand extra money on top of what is required to do the job just to line their own pockets. Why should we accept that?

by qcnguy 1y ago

happymellon 1y ago

You really twist yourself around here. But this? > Decades of populist left or centre-left governments have kept the prices artificially low whilst requiring investment, resulting in a huge accumulation of debt. Bloody Tories, the whole problem isn't that they were in charge for 32 years from 1979-2024, it's the 13 years of Blair. They have been powerless to stop the spooky Left and fix the pipes before the water was privatised (or anything afterwards, because obviously it's still the Left)!

qcnguy 1y ago
The Tories are a centre-left party. That's why they lost the support of conservative voters at the last election and are now in the doldrums, with much of their base having defected to Reform.
- ahartmetz 1y ago
  Maybe they are now (I doubt it), but they surely weren't under Thatcher.
  - qcnguy 1y ago
    Correct. But by "decades" I meant in the 40 years since Thatcher.
  - cma 1y ago
    Water was privatized in the 90s after Thatcher.
    - happymellon 1y ago
      The pipes that "are Victorian and should have been replaced before privatisation" were around before then. They have had plenty of time to replace them.
  - overfeed 1y ago
    The Tories decided to flank Farage from the right during the last elections. Calling them "centre-left" is a joke.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  You must think that the lib dems are now more conservative than them. Bullocks. All of your argument is bullocks
- happymellon 1y ago
  > The Tories are a centre-left party. Oh boy. That's funny. > much of their base having defected to Reform. Yes, they found a party they will say the quiet bits out loud, so they don't feel as uncomfortable being bigots and racists.
- p1necone 1y ago
  I was hopeful that the eventual endgame of right wingers blaming everything on the left when the right was in charge for literal decades would be for them to eventually maybe consider that that wasn't the problem. Turns out I was wrong, all it takes is to no-true-scotsman everything into the "bad wrong left wing" bucket on the quest to move the overton window ever rightwards. Hilarious. The mental gymnastics knows no bounds.
- Podrod 1y ago
  >The Tories are a centre-left party. You honestly believe this? If so: Jesus H. Christ!

OtherShrezzing 1y ago

>Decades of populist left or centre-left governments have kept the prices artificially low whilst requiring investment The overwhelming majority of people would disagree that the Conservative Party can be described as "left". Since 1979, the Conservatives have been in power for all but 14 years.

qcnguy 1y ago
Their voters obviously don't agree. Not only have they defected to Reform on a massive scale, but Reform recruiting former Tories like Dorries is hugely controversial within the party base, exactly because Tories are viewed as being too left wing.
- 4ggr0 1y ago
  that's like saying the CDU in germany is left because CDU voters started voting AfD. people flocking to an even more conservative party does not mean that the original party is somehow left.
  - qcnguy 1y ago
    Good example. The CDU is in a coalition with the left wing parties and refuses to work with the AfD in any way, not even winning votes with their votes, on the basis that the AfD is right wing and thus inherently evil. So the CDU is indeed not a recognizably right wing party anymore, and has suffered mass defections for that very reason. If it were, it would enter into coalitions with other right wing parties rather than being taking orders from a partly literally called Die Linke.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      It's entirely possible to have a right-wing party that still takes the stance "we don't join coalitions with the Nazis".
    - triceratops 1y ago
      > on the basis that the AfD is right wing and thus inherently evil I thought it was on the basis of the whole Nazi thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#Neo-Nazi_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#Neo-Na... Everyone except Nazis agrees that Nazis are inherently evil.

scythe 1y ago

>This is exactly what would have also happened if the water companies were not privatized The post office in the United States is not privatized and yet has been able to set prices in a way that sustains the business for centuries. You can't simply assume that all public entities will ignore fiscal reality. In fact you may run into the opposite problem: when a utility is public, their debts appear on the government balance sheet and legislators are responsible for them. When it's spun off as a quasi-private monopoly, the government can impose debt on the utility without appearing to increase the public debt.

qcnguy 1y ago
Yes, in theory nationalized companies can set prices rationally and turn a profit. In practice they rarely manage this for long because sooner or later a populist comes along and forces them to lower prices in order to win votes. It's not just water where the UK has a problem with this. Transport for London has also been forced to underprice its services for years by London's socialist mayor, it's a big part of how he won votes, meaning they've been building up a huge tech debt backlog. He clearly expects that the rest of the country will eventually bail London out and he'll be seen as the hero. The US is a very right wing country. It's politicians are better able to avoid populist price controls. Maybe with Mamdani that's now changing.
- danans 1y ago
  > It's not just water where the UK has a problem with this. Transport for London has also been forced to underprice its services for years by London's socialist mayor In the US we have a problem with fantastically underpricing public roads. We don't expect their books to break even, much less generate a profit. Meanwhile everyone asks why train systems are not profitable. > The US is a very right wing country. Yeah, at least compared with most of Europe. > It's politicians are better able to avoid populist price controls. You didn't notice when the current president (somewhat successfully) bullied retailers into swallowing tariff-caused price increases, so they wouldn't damage his popularity? That almost seems right-wing socialist.
  - 1y ago

autoexec 1y ago

> This is exactly what would have also happened if the water companies were not privatized This clearly isn't always true and when it does happen the public has the ability to require the transparency from their government to catch it happening quickly and the ability to hold the elected officials responsible for it accountable by voting them out and replacing them. Private corporations don't allow the level of transparency the public needs and aren't accountable to the public either. Maybe the government could work out some deal that gives the public the right to put webcams in every meeting/board room of the private company, force their bookkeeping to be published to the internet, allow the public to request internal email and other communications, require independent audits/reports, and grant the public the ability to fire and replace any and all employees or executives at the private company who fail to do their jobs, but even then you'd still have the problem that private companies demand extra money on top of what is required to do the job just to line their own pockets. Why should we accept that?