Apr 9th 2013, 2:51:03
She is ultimately the centerpiece for beginning the complete failure of privatizing things owned by the government.
She sold off public monopolies, used the proceeds to cut taxes, and put the privatized firms on a profit-making basis so that the stock prices rose sharply, making capital gains for investors...
And the result Britain achieved with this transfer from the middle class to the financiers [via new charges for those companies] was that services for all public utilities were cut back and prices were massively increased against residential consumers in favor of decreases for industrial users. And, of course, wages stayed flat while politicians allowed those charges to increase and stole the once-public pensions for those workers moved to private companies.
Note that another side of the real problem was that Britain’s Treasury refused to authorize the funds needed for investment in public services as long as the enterprises remained in public hands.. due to the stupidities of the Chicago monetarists aka Thatcherites, high on themselves after concluding their escapades in Chile were successful. The problem could have been cured by letting government departments operate as independent public agencies off the balance sheet, like America’s Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA).
Ultimately the Thatcherist legacy was not to make governments work better -- just the opposite like Republicans in the US today, it was to assert that they could not work efficiently while obstructing every mechanism by which that management does actually happen.
Note that the only beneficiary of Thatcher's entire legacy has been the one square mile of London which is the finance sector. What Margaret Thatcher provided was a legitimization [she was a "useful fool"] for turning Britain into a financier's paradise.
She sold off public monopolies, used the proceeds to cut taxes, and put the privatized firms on a profit-making basis so that the stock prices rose sharply, making capital gains for investors...
And the result Britain achieved with this transfer from the middle class to the financiers [via new charges for those companies] was that services for all public utilities were cut back and prices were massively increased against residential consumers in favor of decreases for industrial users. And, of course, wages stayed flat while politicians allowed those charges to increase and stole the once-public pensions for those workers moved to private companies.
Note that another side of the real problem was that Britain’s Treasury refused to authorize the funds needed for investment in public services as long as the enterprises remained in public hands.. due to the stupidities of the Chicago monetarists aka Thatcherites, high on themselves after concluding their escapades in Chile were successful. The problem could have been cured by letting government departments operate as independent public agencies off the balance sheet, like America’s Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA).
Ultimately the Thatcherist legacy was not to make governments work better -- just the opposite like Republicans in the US today, it was to assert that they could not work efficiently while obstructing every mechanism by which that management does actually happen.
Note that the only beneficiary of Thatcher's entire legacy has been the one square mile of London which is the finance sector. What Margaret Thatcher provided was a legitimization [she was a "useful fool"] for turning Britain into a financier's paradise.