Recently, some in the federal government have been calling for the privatization of certain public sector services like the post office, Amtrak, airports, and air traffic control. We explore if this is a good idea. The short answer is: it depends. Certain services, like waste collection, work really well in private hands; some private school competition is good for education. But some services have been set up to fail and don't have to. Dozens of airports are being replaced or upgraded with almost no project using any tax dollars. That is great value for the air traveler and the cities working on these projects. Amtrak has one section of rail that they own and is actually profitable, the NE corridor. If the federal government hadn't been deliberately starving this entity of funding, so many more routes would be profitable. It needs continued subsidy because the government has poorly funded it. Clearly, it is well managed, since the area they focused on, they own, are upgrading and is profitable. The Post office is another one. It would be self-sustaining, but Congress has, on more than one occasion, raided the pension fund for its own use. How can that remain solvent if Congress keeps stealing from them?

#publicservices #privitization #airportupgrades #amtrak #usps #dia #slc #LAX #JFK #LGA #MCI #PDX #necorridor