Rescuing Politics from the Economists: Privatizing the Public Sector

Abstract

The passage of Proposition 13 by the voters of California in 1978 has given new impetus to those who would encourage the private provision of public goods and services. As Bennett and Johnson (1980, p. 364) note: The ideal state would be lower taxes without reductions in public services; however, this state can be achieved only by increasing substantially the economic efficiency of the production of public goods so that the same level of outputs can be produced at lower costs and savings returned to the taxpayer in the form of tax reductions. The answer to this challenge, in the minds of many, is the private provision of public goods and services through contractual arrangements.KeywordsPublic SectorPublic GoodProduction FunctionGarbage CollectionEvaluative CriterionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.