Jeremy Mohler of “In the Public Interest” has advice for you. You should consider subscribing to its website, which keeps tabs on the privatization movement, which is attacking every part of the public sector in hopes of monetizing it.
Like anything involving extended family, Thanksgiving can turn into a combat zone at the first mention of privatization. Just the words “public-private partnership” can send grandma out the door for a cigarette. Is this the year your nephew drops “neoliberalism” at the dinner table?
Here’s some advice to calm the inevitable tension this time around.
You never want to jump right in to explaining that privatization is a key part of the neoliberal project to enrich corporations while attempting to solve nearly all social problems with private markets.
So, try saying stuff like:
Privatization goes hand-in-hand with cutting taxes for Wall Street and corporations.
Companies that contract with the government to provide things like water, trash pickup, and school janitorial services often argue that they’re more efficient than the “bureaucratic” public sector. But evidence of this is mixed at best. For example, private water corporations charge 58 percent more than those that are publicly owned.
But all the talk about efficiency and cutting costs helps support the idea that the government is wasteful and taxes are bad. Meanwhile, contractors and private investors pocket gobs of our public money by lowering service quality, cutting jobs and wages, and sidestepping protections for the environment.
Tell grandpa that Wall Street needs to pay more in taxes, or his water rates might soon be going up.
Without private prison corporations, it would be much harder for Trump to fulfill his racist promises.
The two largest private prison corporations, CoreCivic and GEO Group, currently detain two-thirds of people arrested and held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.
Without help from these two publicly traded corporations — whose owners also receive a massive tax break because they call themselves real estate companies — the Trump administration would be scrambling for detention space for its immigration crackdown.
Charter schools are not a progressive policy — they are a form of privatization.
While some privately operated charter schools provide services like dual language programs not available in some public school districts, many simply replicate — and attempt to replace — traditional, neighborhood schools.
Meanwhile, billionaires, private investors, and real estate developers are spending cash nationwide supporting political candidates who want to increase the number of charter schools, take autonomy from teachers, and limit what the public can see about charter school spending.
Having too many charter schools actually hurts students in neighborhood schools. Last year, charter schools cost Oakland’s school district $57.3 million, helping force cuts at neighborhood schools to academic counselors, school supplies, and, even, toilet paper.
Stopping privatization fights inequality.
Water, transportation, education, and other public goods are the foundation of our neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Continuing to hand them over to corporations and private investors, the same people who continually lobby for lower taxes, will only make things worse for most of us.
Privatization has been particularly harmful to women and people of color, as nearly 60 percent of public sector jobs are held by women and one in five black workers are public workers.
As a key component of the conservative (and neoliberal) argument for “limited government,” privatization helps hide the fact that the government is in fact “big” when it comes to things like war-making, prisons, and controlling women’s bodies.
Good luck! And watch out for those public-private partnerships, they’re usually more private than they are public.
Thanks for reading,
Jeremy Mohler
In the Public Interest
In the Public Interest
1305 Franklin St., Suite 501
Oakland, CA 94612
United States
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Privatization, sounds like a fun Thanksgiving conversation!
“Companies that contract with the government to provide things like water, trash pickup, and school janitorial services often argue that they’re more efficient than the “bureaucratic” public sector. But evidence of this is mixed at best. For example, private water corporations charge 58 percent more than those that are publicly owned.”
You can also point out that “efficiency” by itself is a value-neutral word. It’s how that “efficiency” is brought about and what it is used for that matters. Adolph Eichmann, for instance, was very “efficient” in getting Jews to the camps.
When talking about “efficiency” in this context, it usually means job loss for lots of people. It means firing as many workers as possible and loading up the remaining people with as much work as can be extracted from them (or, often, more). “Efficiency” in garbage removal, for instance, means that instead of having a garbage truck driver and one or two people on the truck to pick up the trash as the truck rolls along, you fire one or both of the extra people and the driver has to stop the truck, pick up the garbage himself, and then get back in and drive. And he still has to cover the same route in the same amount of time. Meanwhile, the other guy or both other guys on the truck are now unemployed and likely drawing some kind of government aid.
And, as pointed out, the public rarely realizes the savings from this “efficiency” anyway. Whatever the private company saves in labor goes to their profit and the salaries of their executives.
In Los Angeles, privatization of trash pickup meant the company charging customers extra fees for such things as having to walk a few steps from the curb or for having to open a gate. They mayor made a huge mistake selling out on garbage.
Are you certain efficiency is value free? Your examples seem to conflate efficiency and effectiveness.
Efficiency means doing something with maximum productivity and minimal waste (including waste of time). Yes, it’s value-neutral. Getting an injured person to the hospital efficiently is a good thing. Getting Jews into ovens efficiently is a bad thing. It’s a matter of what you’re doing efficiently – and who benefits and who suffers – that makes it good or bad.
There are some things that SHOULD NOT be privatized, like those services, which add benefit to the community, like TRASH removal and public schools.
How to talk to Uncle Bob at the Thanksgiving dinner table about privatization, climate change denier and other right wing memes he supports:
Bob, did I ever mention that you’re full of crap?
I would love to come to thanksgiving dinner at your place. It would be like a movie.
The perfect Thanksgiving song:
Nice, Greg. Hopefully, he comes from a family with a sense of humor.
“Privatization” is the corporate/Wall Street code word for “Profitization” that would allow big corporations to take over mail delivery and charge anything they want.
Corporations are all about PROFIT, so you know what would happen to cost and the curriculum if they took over: If public schools are ever profitized, education will eventually be only for the wealthy and the wealthy kids’ curriculum will teach how great corporations are and how the world is meant to be ruled by the privileged class, not by mere commoners, even though commoners will still pay the taxes that go to profitized “public” schools that are for the upper class only.
Nowadays, if anyone says anything in favor of privatization (or testing), one can simply reply with, “That’s what she said.” Betsy DeVos, that is.
It’s Amway or the highway –Betsy DeVos
Betsy$ Choice: Amway or the scamway
Scamway or the highway works.