Gar Alperovitz - Preventing the Fall of Rome

Although public ownership is surprisingly widespread, it can also be vulnerable to challenge. The fiscal crisis, and conservative resistance to raising taxes, has led some mayors and governors to sell off public assets. In Indiana, Governor Mitch Daniels sold the Indiana Toll Road to Spanish and Australian investors. In Chicago, then-Mayor Richard Daley privatized parking meters and toll collection on the Chicago Skyway and even proposed selling off recycling collection, equipment maintenance, and the annual “Taste of Chicago” festival.

A Rasmussen poll reported that Americans under thirty were “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism.” Even if many were unsure about what “socialism” is, they were clearly open to something new, whatever it might be called.

How far continuing financial and political pressures may lead other officials to attempt to secure revenues by selling off public assets is an open question. Public resistance to such strategies, although less widely publicized, has been surprisingly strong in many areas. Toll road sales have been held up in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and newly elected Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently voiced his opposition to an attempt to privatize Midway Airport as previously attempted by Daley. An effort to transfer city-owned parking garages to private ownership in Los Angeles also failed when residents and business leaders realized parking rates would spike if the deal went through.

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http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/preventing-the-fall-of-rome