Private sector

“ First of all, I believe that if -- the latest statistics based on the economic reports show that 90 percent of these jobs are private-sector jobs. No doubt there are public sector jobs, whether it's police officers or teachers, that are important to our long-term economic growth, that actions that we take or don't take will have a negative impact on whether or not those jobs continue. But obviously, and you saw last week with the CEOs that met with the President, that -- or small business owners -- those are the jobs that are going to fuel an economic recovery, not public sector jobs. ”

“ And so on the one hand, we know this has to be lead by the private sector. We do think that smart policy on our part can send the right signals to the private sector. And you guys are helping us do that. ”

“ That’s why the overwhelming majority of the jobs created will be in the private sector, while our plan will save the public sector jobs of teachers, cops, firefighters and others who provide vital services. ”

“ We will encourage, support and guide the development of the non-public sector. We will implement all the policies for relaxing controls over market access and energetically support the involvement of private capital in SOE reform and its entry into such areas as infrastructure, public utilities, financial services and social programs. ”

“ This view of the development challenge underlines in each and every case our basic economy policies, particularly those governing the role of private enterprise in the economy. There have been questions raised as to the role of private enterprise. ”

“ The undertaking by the State or the Municipality, or other units of social life, of various departments of industry, such as the railways, telegraphs, post-offices, is a definite assertion that, in the supply of the common services rendered by these industries, the competition of private interests cannot be relied upon to work for the public good. ”

“ A third group of functions embraces the direct participation in industry by the Government itself, as the post-office, gas, electric, and water works, canals, roads, sewers, parks, etc. In other countries, when the functions of government are more extended than in the United States, it conducts railroads, telegraph and telephone systems, tenements, pawn shops, theaters, industrial insurance, or various other activities. The line which divides public from private enterprise varies greatly in different countries. ”

“ And as we have seen, the intention of the industrial reformers is to introduce public management into the heart of the American industrial system; that is, into the operation of railroads and public service corporations, and in this way to bring about by incessant official interference that harmony between public and private interest which must be the object of a national economic system. ”

“ The absorption of private industry will be gradual. The public ateliers will all be united from the start [120] into a grand federation, and will form a mutual insurance company, so that the losses of one may be made good by the profits of others. ”

“ The first lesson in political economy of which I have any distinct recollection was to the effect that no government can carry on any industrial enterprise as profitably as it can be managed by individuals. As an abstract proposition this may be true. It cannot at present be proved or disproved. It has been abundantly demonstrated, however, that governments can and do carry on some very important classes of business with financial, political and social advantages to the whole public, incomparably superior to those obtainable previously from private performance of the same service. ”

“ The state shall coordinate and regulate state-owned economy, co-operative economy, the individual economy of peasants and handicraftsmen, private capitalist economy and state capitalist economy, in their spheres of operations, supply of raw materials, marketing, labour conditions, technical equipment, policies of public and general finance, etc. ”

“ Every practical economic problem that confronts us calls in some degree for the exercise of state activity. It is necessary for us then, if we are to render sound judgment on these questions, to have a clear opinion as to the proper sphere of government action, as to how far the State should interfere in the economic activities of private individuals. We cannot do better than to state first the main functions of a modern state. The modern industrial system, as we saw in the first section, is based upon certain fundamental institutions—personal liberty, competition, and private property. ”

“ There is no guarantee that, if other guardians of capital were appointed, the public would be better served.416 Modern industry has long ago proved the administrative superiority of private enterprise in commercial transactions; and all social functions that admit of it will gradually pass into private management, always excepting the great theoretic functions in which combined action will ever be necessary. ”

“ The answer to all these questions is that the Government and the Municipalities have proved that they can manage vast and intricate businesses, and can manage them more cheaply, more efficiently, and more to the advantage and satisfaction of the public than the same class of business has ever been managed by private firms. ”

“ We hear much about quasi-public corporations, and public opinion has gone a long way in taking away from the owner of public-service corporations the right to manage his own property, to name his own rates or prices, to decide about his methods, and has imposed on him the responsibility of providing safe and adequate public service from his private means, but so far has exerted little influence upon the men who have to make the quasi-public corporation of use to the public. ”

“ What is needed now is not the multiplication of government reports, but corporate industry, the formation of land companies, development companies, irrigation companies, any kind of corporation that will call out private capital from its hiding places, offer employment to millions and start the wheels moving again. ”

“ Every government, considered as a corporate body, has needs of its own apart from those of the people whom it governs. Whether it be a city, a state, or a smaller governing unit, it must solve the problems of revenue and expenditure just as a private household. Later writers applied the term economics mainly to this group of problems to which we now apply the name public finance, rather than to that group which in the diagram above are included under Private Economics. ”

“ To the degree that governments faithfully exercise their legitimate public functions and refrain from interfering with legitimate private functions, they contribute to the Productive Process. This is demonstrated by observable Economic results. Wherever Government approximates a realization of its functions, Economic conditions are manifestly better than where it neglects or abuses them. Evidently, then, Government is a form of human service which, like all other human service forms, belongs as an Economic factor in the Labor category. ”

“ Sufficient has, however, been developed to demonstrate that neither potentially competing banking institutions nor competing railroad or industrial corporations should be subject to a common source of private control. ”

“ Public management will begin in those branches where the difficulties are smallest. Publicly managed enterprises will originally represent kind of oases linked with private enterprises by the laws of exchange of commodities. ”

“ Because private enterprise really meant more, therefore the Government said more, and the very defining of the work and circumscribing of its sphere made the results sounder, more lasting, and more substantial. ”

“ Who is to say how private enterprise would come out if it tried its hand at State work? Those who have had most experience of joint-stock companies and their management, will probably be least inclined to believe in the innate superiority of private enterprise over State management. ”

“ Assuming, however, that there is no nationalization of an industry, but that it continues on a reformed basis of private ownership, it is important to discuss under what circumstances the Government ought to intervene in regard to any question affecting the administration and control of that industry, or, indeed, of all industries in general. ”

“ Now, if for this conception of a central Government, we substitute that of a body of persons occupied in industrial pursuits, of whom each adds in his private capacity to the common store, we at once obtain an approximation to the actual condition of a civilized mercantile community, from which approximation we might easily proceed into still completer analysis. ”

“ The Federal Government is called upon to buy or hire unsalable ships, to build canals which will not pay, to furnish capital for all sorts of experiments, and to provide capital for enterprises of which private individuals will win the profits. ”

“ Thus a system of collective economy is any system that increases public influence in private enterprise, on the condition that it results in a more just administration and distribution, particularly in the cases of monopolized industries already organized into trusts or cartels. ”

“ Significant as may be the readiness of democratic governments in time of critical economic or crucial war emergency to enter the market place or to produce, either to the exclusion of private enterprises or in competition with them, these are exceptional circumstances; rationalization of the economy is principally achieved by coercing private owners and producers to act consistently with a governmental definition of the public interest. It is such examples of direct governmental control of private entrepreneurs, producers, and distributors that are to be examined in this chapter. ”

“ The role of government corporations in the realm of economic development lies essentially in undertaking ventures in new and untried fields where the risks involved may inhibit private enterprise.
In this sense, therefore, government corporations play a pivotal role in the attainment of our development objectives, particularly in the areas of production and industrial development and social amelioration. ”

“ The very fact, indeed, that the state, as a producer, or a renderer of public services, such as letter-carrying, has thus to protect itself against the competition of private enterprise, is sufficient evidence of the difficulties which a state organisation encounters in securing industrial ability which shall be constantly of the highest kind, and also of its inevitable tendency to hamper, if not to stifle, the development and the practical activity of superior ability elsewhere. ”

“ I have made it a point to give first place to private enterprise and to transfer those activities formerly under State rule to autonomous enterprises in which the State has an interest. They are run by business men along business lines as business institutions. The State's principal function in them is to protect the native employes. The gold mines at Kilo are an example. ”

“ The millions of productive jobs that a program of this nature could bring are jobs in private enterprise. They are jobs based on the expanded demand for the output of our economy for consumption and investment. Through a program of this character we can maintain a national income high enough to provide for an orderly retirement of the public debt along with reasonable tax reduction. ”

“ It must always be remembered that in the working of a [Pg 218] monopoly by the State, the interest of the public as a whole is the paramount consideration, and every economy consistent with efficiency must be adopted. ”

“ The entire wealth of the country in its different forms, irrespective of ownership, shall be subordinated to the general interest.
Public initiative2. Public interest in economic activity is recognised. Reserve to public sectorEssential resources or services may be reserved by law to the public sector especially in the case of monopolies. Likewise, State intervention in companies may be imposed when the public interest so demands. ”

“ With a skill that amounts to positive genius this voluntary agency has placed before the people the ruling market prices and the enormously higher prices actually paid by officials for public supplies. Taking the purchasing departments of our best organised private corporations as a model it has drawn practical plans for the installation of similar methods as part of our municipal machinery. ”

“ The essential economic decisions, however, are still made by the owners of private wealth. If there is to be an organization of economic society that will function successfully and autonomously, the knowledge on which the decisions affecting economic policy are made must be public property. Until that step is taken the economic life of society will be directed by the chance desires of those who own the machinery of production. ”

“ The second major policy I desire to lay before you has to do with the growing concentration of economic power and the threat to free competitive private enterprise. In 1941 the Temporary National Economic Committee completed a comprehensive investigation into the workings of the national economy. The Committee's study showed that, despite a half century of anti-trust law enforcement, one of the gravest threats to our welfare lay in the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a small number of giant organizations. ”

“ You will find continually that private corporations, such as joint-stock banking companies, come to grief from not acting on this principle; and what holds of these small and, simple private administrations holds still more of the great and complex public administrations. ”

“ The Realm may further legislate, in case of urgent necessity and in the interest of the national economy, to oblige business undertakings or associations to combine, on the basis of self administration, with a view to securing the co-operation of all the productive forces of the nation, to associating employers and employed in the administration, and to regulating production, manufacture, distribution, employment, prices, as also import and export of goods on principles of public economy. ”