Obama - Stop privatizing! Let the government handle it all.

[XZeroII]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29582905/

I'm hating Obama more and more every day. The government is growing by leaps and bounds and we're running up TRILLIONS of dollars in debt. And he wants to spend MORE money by cutting a program that is saving money.

So what if it's a political nightmare to manage private contractors in the IRS. DEAL WITH IT. The rest of us have to make sacrifices and cutbacks, but not the government. They're just p*ssing away our hard earned money. This just ticks me off.

 

[Jiggz]

Putting the country into debt deeper everyday is one of the quickest way to turn this country into Socialist-Democracy. The other way is take over of all services, i.e., utilities, banking, health care, and probably even restaurants! And the American people made this decision last November 2008 as often repeated by BHO in his daily speeches through his teleprompter. So there shouldn't be no surprise here except that it seems most people are not ready to give up their free market mentality yet. Common people, "You voted, so now you give and make way for whatever changes you voted for!"

 

[miketheidiot]

oh god its the apocalypse. everyone get your guns and gold and canned food.!!1

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: Jiggz
Putting the country into debt deeper everyday is one of the quickest way to turn this country into Socialist-Democracy. The other way is take over of all services, i.e., utilities, banking, health care, and probably even restaurants! And the American people made this decision last November 2008 as often repeated by BHO in his daily speeches through his teleprompter. So there shouldn't be no surprise here except that it seems most people are not ready to give up their free market mentality yet. Common people, "You voted, so now you give and make way for whatever changes you voted for!"

i'm not sure if this post is a parody or not

 

[Elfear]

In many ways the government employees can do the job more economically. I work for the Army and after years of handing off jobs to private contractors, they are finding that some job functions are run less efficiently through privatization. I certainly don't think that's the case everywhere, but I think the government is smart for at least examining the situation to see where it makes sense to privatize and where it doesn't.

 

[BoberFett]

I'm against big government (I'd prefer if tax law were simple and we could all but eliminate the IRS) but when government is expected to provide a service, it does make sense to have them actually provide a service. Otherwise they're just a middleman and we all know what middlemen do. Nothing. They just skim off the top of a transaction providing little actual value to the process. If the government can't handle the function itself, maybe we don't need them to provide it at all.

The military is a good example. I'd much rather have a fully government run military than let a group of lawless mercenaries like Blackwater run things.

 

[MovingTarget]

Privatize where it makes sense, but not everywhere. This is something that can more effectively be handled in-house as it is a regular part of what they need to do, not something that needs to be done once in a blue moon. Having a dedicated force without the corporate profit overhead actually makes sense. Besides, a lot of these collection firms (that contracted w/ the IRS or not) have very little in the way of accountability and/or scruples. It is a much more transparent process as part of the IRS itself.

 

[theeedude]

WTF, private debt collectors were allowed to keep quarter of the taxes they collect? That's just outrageous.

 

[XZeroII]

In the article is says that it actually saved money to use private debt collectors. I agree that we should privatize where it makes sense but it seems like Obama just wants to rule everything.

 

[smack Down]

Originally posted by: XZeroII
In the article is says that it actually saved money to use private debt collectors. I agree that we should privatize where it makes sense but it seems like Obama just wants to rule everything.

No it does not say that private debt collectors saved money.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: XZeroII
In the article is says that it actually saved money to use private debt collectors. I agree that we should privatize where it makes sense but it seems like Obama just wants to rule everything.

Yes, that's what I got from the article too

This is no different than any other decision any enterprise has to make, public or private. Many make the decision to outsource, and many of these private companies (I'm not saying those in this example do this, because I don't know) simply outsource to additional companies. The end result is layers is communication, bureaucracy and inefficiency that end up costing a hell of a lot more than if you just otherwise kept operations in-house.

But let's all get histrionic and jump on the "OMG big government!" bandwagon. If it makes sense for the government them to keep operations internal, which in a great number of cases it does for any business, then there's no cause for complaint here. The IRS is past due on a tremendous period of reformation anyway.

I think the problem of so many on this board is that there seems to be little capacity for taking a tactical decision in the context of an overall strategy, letting your emotions get the best of you and distorting any potential value in these decisions.

 

[theeedude]

It does not say it saved money.

The agency had been turning over to private debt collectors some delinquency cases, often in the $5,000 to $10,000 range, that the IRS lacked the manpower to pursue. The program cost about $7.6 million a year to administer, and private contractors were allowed to keep about a quarter of the taxes they collected.
The program brought in more money than it cost to operate, but it had become a political headache for the IRS.

Just because it brought more money then it cost to operate, doesn't mean it would not bring in more money had IRS been staffed to have enough manpower to do it itself.
Look at it this way, these debt collectors pick and choose which debt they are more likely to collect, then they keep 25% of what they collect, which is already a fraction of the overall debt owed to the IRS.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: senseamp
WTF, private debt collectors were allowed to keep quarter of the taxes they collect? That's just outrageous.

That's quite normally actually. Standard collections rates can be anywhere from 5-30%, sometimes more, depending on the circumstances.

And this is what people just don't understand. Entire businesses are built not on just collecting on claims/delinquent accounts, but also in simply reducing the A/R aging days. These companies will often just charge a fraction of a percent, but for both sides it's still immensely profitable. All b2c companies deal with this in some capacity.

If you can bring it in-house and go from an average cost of 25% per collection to 10, you've just saved yourself a good amount of money; furthermore, if your average AR aging schedule is 60+ days (which it often is in collections at this level) and you get it down to 30, you've just got some much needed cash flow.

Things can't be considered in a vacuum. The media loves to take a little snippet and throw it up for partisan fodder.

[edit]Just in case it wasn't clear: I agree with you that it's outrageous, but it's still fairly common practice especially in healthcare claims.[/edit]

 

[Craig234]

Ideologue version of the story:

Originally posted by: XZeroII
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29582905/

I'm hating Obama more and more every day. The government is growing by leaps and bounds and we're running up TRILLIONS of dollars in debt. And he wants to spend MORE money by cutting a program that is saving money.
So what if it's a political nightmare to manage private contractors in the IRS. DEAL WITH IT. The rest of us have to make sacrifices and cutbacks, but not the government. They're just p*ssing away our hard earned money. This just ticks me off.

Factual version of the story:

Reuters

The independently reviewed study showed it is reasonable to conclude that when working with a similar debt inventory, IRS collection is more cost effective than using private contractors.
It found that the IRS automated collection system cost seven cents per dollar collected, while the private contractor cost was 24 cents per dollar collected. The IRS system collected 11 percent of the balance due while the private contractors collected 4 percent of the balance due from the study cases.

The thread has it backwards. The problem was ideologues pushing privatization for its own sake whether it was better or not, under the Bush administration.

The OP exemplifies that ideology - starting out with the conclusion of what works, and then cherry picking the facts that agree - or in his case, inventing them.

The Republicans for a while have been blind ideologues as 'anti-government', and pursuing policies without much regard for the facts.

It's why the question came up so often under Bush (and Reagan), how can people with an ideology to despise government, be good at governing?

The answer, of course, was they weren't good at it.

Even the clearest, most boggling examples of the screwups, though, don't get through to the ideologues.

De-emphasizing terrorism and ignoring the many warnings before 9/11. Putting industries' representatives in government oversight roles for those industries. Gutting FEMA before Katrina. Throwing out the State Department's plans for post-invasion Iraq for a 'small' approach, including the use of expensive 'privatized' forces that came to outnumber the mlitary - and create political turmoil over their abuses of Iraqis. A Medicare drug bill with a giveaway of $150B to big pharma, outlawing any price negotiation for the drugs. Attempting to privatize the efficitnt Social Security program and triple the expenses, creating big profits for Wall Street.

 

[halik]

Originally posted by: senseamp
WTF, private debt collectors were allowed to keep quarter of the taxes they collect? That's just outrageous.

Conversely federal employees can be up to 25% less efficient and we're still better off ...
IIRC IRS is very good at recovering money, it cost them cents per dollar recovered.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: XZeroII

I'm hating Obama more and more every day. The government is growing by leaps and bounds and we're running up TRILLIONS of dollars in debt. And he wants to spend MORE money by cutting a program that is saving money.

Don't worry he is going to cut back on spending as soon as he trims them earmarks !

 

[Jiggz]

I don't know about you guys, but back in 1990 the gov't took over the operation of the Mustang Ranch in Nevada due to non-tax payment. In less than a year the Mustang Ranch went bankrupt and has to be sold on Ebay! Can you believe that? The gov't cannot even operate a business of selling whores and liquors, let alone a nation!

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Jiggz
I don't know about you guys, but back in 1990 the gov't took over the operation of the Mustang Ranch in Nevada due to non-tax payment. In less than a year the Mustang Ranch went bankrupt and has to be sold on Ebay! Can you believe that? The gov't cannot even operate a business of selling whores and liquors, let alone a nation!

I get so tired of posting dozens and really hundreds of similar rebuttals to right-wing idiocy.

The patterns are so consistent - some illogical and usually false nugget/turd is used for the basis of 'proving' some right-wing ideological propaganda. These people fall for it.

But what to do - leave it unanswered possible to infect others?

So, here we go - at least three major problems with this post above.

1. You could point out that the fact that the private owner couldn't run it successfully and pay his taxes is at least as big a failure, if the government ran it badly.

2. Even if the worst of the allegation was true, you don't prove a thing about a trillion-dollar government's efficiency with one anecdote about a brothel.

If you did, I could prove some very interesting things about the entire private economy with anecdotes about thieves and Enron and sex harrassment cases and more.

3. However, the incident is not true. The government never operated the Mustang Ranch.

It's a lie.

Now, it's enough work just to get you to get the basic clue about the above.

The next lesson, which I have no expectation you are ready for, would be why are lies like this, which are propaganda, being spread so much, and who is doing it?

Of course, a lot of it is simply the 'idiot infection syndrome' - one idiot falls for this and hands it to the next who falls for it and passes it on.

But there's actually an industry as well who is pushing Americans into adopting an ideology that is harmful to their interests - but helpful to some people.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Originally posted by: Jiggz
I don't know about you guys, but back in 1990 the gov't took over the operation of the Mustang Ranch in Nevada due to non-tax payment. In less than a year the Mustang Ranch went bankrupt and has to be sold on Ebay! Can you believe that? The gov't cannot even operate a business of selling whores and liquors, let alone a nation!

Of course you don`t know about us...we are not idiots.....
Just the fact you would bring up the false lie that the government operated the mustang ranch says alot about your inherent lack of character.

http://myrightwingdad.blogspot...ent-mustang-ranch.html

It is a standard right-wing myth that the US government "tried to run" the Mustang Ranch.

They didn't. The owners of the Mustang Ranch--first Joe Comforte, then a holding company he controlled--conducted a series of criminal tax frauds over the entire decade of the 1990s which ended up with the US seizing the Ranch and re-selling it to another owner, who are running it still.