Free, I'm on skype! In the five years after the Bell breakup, long distance rates fell 40%. Too bad nobody told gardener.
Todays newspaper has an article about the potential privitazation of Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans, Seems Mayor Rey Negron is seeking to sell the facility to raise money. The Article also spoke of attempts to privatize (sell) O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Here in New Jersey our goverment raised the prospects of selling the Garden State Parkway to a private concern to raise money. This prospect had finally got the attention of voters to how screwed up our state goverment is, that it would have to liquidate The Parkway.
I haven't made a long distance call in fifteen years. I either email, or they phone me. Yet my basic reduced fee landline is more than double today. I was paying 5.87 a month for my phone and 44.00 a year for dialup. When ATT bought up SBC they upped the monthly rate to over 12.00 a month. But hey ATT now owns the wires once again. That's the free market system isn't it? And if you factor in what you pay for broadband to connect with Skype, it's not free.
Land lines are becoming more expensive because they're dying out, no one uses them anymore. You can get a cell phone with a plan that by far beats it, or not even a plan and just pay by the minute as you need them. I'd say that's pretty damn good advancement by the free market. And for my DSL broadband it's $35 a month for unlimited access to information, music, movies, tv shows(fuck paying for cable), AIM and something like Skype if I want to use it. Not bad from my phone company.
Its a still tiny fraction of what it used to cost to call long distance. Which, if you try to remember, it the whole point of this debate. Costs are down, your whining is up.
The problem I have is with the attitude of those that seem to think all private is good and all public is bad. I think there is a need for both service and profit. But having said that I also think that it is always prudent to have privately owned institutions, corporation etc to be publically monitored and regulated.
There is need for both service and profit, and generally the private sector can do both better. There are some exceptions though, such as mail, many current postal routes would never be profitable.
But why should the public get burdened with the unprofitable while the private reap the profit? Lets say you have a publicly owned postal system, some sections and routes are profitable and others not. Well the profits from those bits can be used to subsidise the unprofitable parts – which is good for the tax payer. But if you privatise the profitable bits and only leaves the unprofitable rump for the tax payer to subsidise, that doesn’t sound like a very good for the tax payer. Also if a company is profitable and nationalised then why shouldn’t the public benefit from the profits directly? If a company is making money and the profits go into government coffers meaning it can keep taxes down why shouldn’t it? The French car company Renault was nationalised after WWII (and partly privatised in 1996) it was and still is a successful company (incidentally owning the American Motors Corporation between 1979-87 during the time when it was a completely nationalised company, which means the French people actually owned a slice of the US car industry). The thing is that nationalisation and public ownership can be a useful tool; it can protect industries and business that are fundamentally viable but have got into financial difficulties or when a sudden collapse (rather than a later controlled wind up) could have a domino effect on the larger economy. To me public ownership can be useful just as private ownership can be useful the problem is that some people seem to be so driven by dogmatic ideology that to them private is always good and public is always bad.
You pay 420.00 a year. I can't afford that. I pay approximately 216.00 a year. You pay almost twice what I pay. How much exactly would I have to pay to get a cell phone, and include the upfront contract costs a person has to sign up for to get one? Right now I have internet access I have a phone and I don't have to charge anything to my credit card. And that 35.00 a month does it include your cell phone? I think not.
And your point being? That's be like complaining the cable bill didn't cover the cell phone bill. Aside from the upfront cost of the phone(which a cheap one is like $30-40) you can can get a pre-paid phone and put as many minutes as you want on it. I'm sorry but you get what you pay for. $216 a year for anything works out to $18 a month, which again for anything would be extremely low, nothing is that near that cheap anymore. When we first had AOL years ago it was $20 a month for their shitty service on dial up.
I thought your premise was privatization had reduced all costs. What now you are telling me that's not a reasonable expectation? I've lost my job, and barely hanging on to my home because of the manipulation of power brokers telling me privatization will save me money. Funny thing Enron didn't save me any money, they cost me my job and tripled my winter energy bills. They upped my insurance premiums. What exactly has privatization done for average citizens? Show the average citizen where exactly the savings and profits benefit them? Want to tell us 4.00 a gallon for gas is good for the environment. Going to be a hard sell when we can't get back and forth to work, if we have a job. Going to be impossible if we don't and watch our food prices increase.
The fact that you paid AOL is illustrative. Most of us here used free AOL or Juno or other free services during that period. The fact that you paid for it says a lot. In fact most knowledgeable computer users wouldn't infect their computers with AOL's crap. I know I never did. Maybe that's why my computer is over ten years old and still running. But I am guessing you needed the crutch.
Yea actually your $4 gas is a result of the free market. Sorry but most of the western world, actually most countries in general pay more for gas then the US does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_prices#Average_gasoline_prices_around_the_world Enron broke many basic regulation rules, this has been established by multiple people in multiple threads, do you forget this? Yes privatization has reduced costs, you know you gotta factor in that thing called inflation and look at what you're fully getting out of what you're paying. You've yet to show how it hasn't.
Hopefully you don't mind me butting in, but: -in answer to the original question I do have an example: New Jersey Division of Motor Vehicles. Privitization was a godsend. It is a 100% faster, more organized, and the miserable surly state employed slackers there were replaced by folks who have somewhat of a grasp on the concept of customer service. There's still some bueraucratic nonesense, but nothing like the old days when it was state-run. As for the cost, it's reallly hard to gauge due to the creeping cost of everything plus fun stuff the state tacks on. I'd it's about the same cost-wise, comparatively. just my .02
Well, as most of our crown corporations have been sold off - considerably a large number of those services in Canada have been growing in expenses. ViaRail is a good example, our telecommunications networks in Canada is another. We like, don't have a plan where it's the same price to make long distance calls in Canada like you guys can in the USA or anywhere else in the world. We pay through the nose for our cable, internet, and phone services - it's at least double what Americans pay. We can't take a train for anything less that $40, really. While AmTrack has much lower rates. We used to have affordable rates like the AmTrack system does - but not any longer. This has discouraged people to take public transportation in Canada and we have very few people actually interested in high speed clean trains and such.
Amtrak can actually be expensive, just from New Haven to Penn station it's $35 round trip for off peak hours, $48 I think for peak. Screw them though Metro North does it for $27. Amtrak also looses mad money every year.
Yeah, but they're expanding the train routes in Connecticut this year. At least you live in a state where the train routes are improving and the rates will be revamped and improve because of healthy competition. In Canada, there is no competition except the privatized ViaRail now, which is at least a third more expensive than what you pay on a ticket.
