The Pros And Cons Of New Jersey Privatization

The public interest state has long been considered the cornerstone of democratic government, existing exclusively to identify and defend the public’s safety and welfare through government programs and activities. The public interest is synonymous with the common interest for the purpose of running the state. However, the idea that the common interest can be easily defined in order to be defended is conjecture in itself. For decades, in an effort to serve the implied common interest of the people, governments in all corners of the world continued to grow, taking on responsibilities that could be absorbed by the private sector. In some cases, governments became unproductive behemoths that harmed the public more than they represented it. Since
In recent years, financial crises have prompted local governments in the United States to embrace privatization in an effort to improve their financial condition, balance their budgets, and decrease taxes by reducing operating costs in the public sector and even reducing the size of the public sector itself, and therefore eliminating the strain of government salaries on national, state, and local budgets. In 2010, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie created the New Jersey Privatization Task Force to research and evaluate “opportunities for privatization within state government” (New Jersey Privatization Task Force, 2010). The Task Force found that city governments across the United States including Chicago, Philadelphia, and Indianapolis, had successfully privatized up to 49 city services while saving up to $275 million each(New Jersey Privatization Task Force, 2010). In Sandy Springs, Georgia, the city opened up all government services (not including the local fire and police departments) to competitive bidding in 2005. Sandy Springs is now operated by a public sector totaling only 196 employees (compared to over 1,400 government employees in a nearby town of similar size) and decreased their budget by $30 million (Porter, 2006). Privatization in the United
For example, a private operation may choose not to provide health care for poor members of the community. Conversely, Maureen Mackintosh argued that while the government does provide public services, said services are often inadequate, fail to address the real needs of the public, and limit public freedom through increased control (Mackintosh, 1992). Thus, by incentivizing private contractors and managers to act in some regard to the public interest, a private interest state could succeed in the 21st century without eliminating all essential services that the public sector currently provides.
While the private interest state does face some critical questions, the potential benefit of a private interest state outweighs the potential shortcomings. Ultimately, the 21st century state should be reformed to be a private interest state in an effort to cut increasing costs to the government and taxpayers, and to streamline the existing public sector to deliver goods and services