Smart long term thinking when it comes to privatization unfortunately is not one of the US's strong points. It has been proven over and over that without government regulations, greed usually takes over immediately when corporations start running privatized companies.
We don't need to make any bones about it, but today the direct result of this in America has been that 1% of the US population now controls just about all the private wealth there. At the same time corporate cartels regulate and control most of the pricing for goods and services: re the Financial Industry, Banking Industry, Food Industry, Pharmaceutical Industry, Medical Industry, Chemical Industry, Farming Industry, Communications Industry, Airline Industry, Weapons Industry, etc,, etc., This sad state of affairs in turn is supported by a corporate controlled press and worst of all corporate subsidized politicians.
While "privatization" is the magic word for many of these mainly conservative politicians, they tend to speak out of two sides of their mouth when it comes to subsidies.
On the one hand they advocate privatization of government or non-profit run corporations, while on the other hand they support subsidies to their favorite industries.
In the United States, credible estimates of annual fossil fuel subsidies range from $10 billion to 52 billion annually. Yet these figures don’t even include costs borne by taxpayers related to the climate, local environmental, and health impacts of the fossil fuel industry.
As of July 2014, Oil Change International estimates U.S. fossil fuel subsidies at $37.5 billion annually, including $21 billion in production and exploration subsidies.
Looking at the picture globally, another shocking revelation finds that the $5.3 trillion global fossil fuel subsidy estimate for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.
This can only be qualified as "hanky-panky" capitalism and certainly is not an example that should be followed by the EU.
EU-Digest
