Originally posted by OwlHoot
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Is the public sector more or less chronically inefficient and wasteful than stuff that has been outsourced to the private sector likes of Atos, Capita, G4S, Accenture & co? Are the railways models of efficiency and minimal waste? What about council waste collection? What about utilities? Broadband?
It might be closer to the truth to say that while there is waste and inefficiency in public services, it's there in the private sector as well. If you look at things like the spend per pupil or per patient, it is generally lower in the public sector than the private, that would lead me to think that perhaps out of necessity (cos lets face it they have had a lot more practice) the public sector has become somewhat better than the private at keeping costs down.
Of course there is also a reasonable argument that focussing purely on costs actually increases waste and reduces efficiency because the best value for money is rarely found at the bottom end of the market and although you spend less you end up with less per pound spent.
For some reason people seem to expect state services to provide the same standards as the best of the private sector, what they don't seem willing to acknowledge is that the public sector is often providing those services for half the price. Given that the private sector is supposedly driven to become more efficient by the profit incentive it's safe to assume that if the private sector could reduce their costs by 50% they would jump at the opportunity. They don't, because they cannot do so and maintain the standards they have set themselves.
So I would ask, how is the public sector supposed to deliver the "highest standards" at half the cost when even the magic pixies of the private sector cannot do so?
As an aside, did you know that 200,000 public sector jobs were "lost" in April 2012 because the ONS reclassified them as private sector. That's cuts that is
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