I say “some” because many of the public services mentioned and performed by private contracfors are still being paid with taxpayers euros…so that would be by your definiton “outsourcing”. Some services may have been totally privatized.

However, I believe that the thrust of the article is how–in the author's opinion–the Dutch government has been (figuratively) outsourcing its governance responsibilities

Thanks

Dorian

“Outsourcing” programs traditionally performed by the government to the private sector is not the same thing as free market capitalism. In fact, the two are mutually exclusionary when taxpayer dollars are used to pay for the services provided by the private sector.

In true free market economics, the private sector offers to provide a service completely independent of the government. Under such a scenario, the transaction is a mutual one for both the private company and the customer who agreeing to pay for such a service. There is nothing “mutual” about the government contracting the private sector to perform a service and paying for it with taxpayer dollars since the people paying for the service (the taxpayers) did not mutual enter into this agreement.

Back when Blackwater and Halliburton subsidiary KRB were contracted by the United States government to provide services for our armed forces in Iraq, many people referred to this as privatization. And when Blackwater and KRB ran into problems [i.e. negligence and mistreatment of its employees (KRB), the killing of innocent Iraqis (Blackwater), and overbilling the U.S. government (both)], liberal/progressive critics were quick to point to this as a failure of free market capitalism. Yet, as I explained above, such an arrangement was anything but free market capitalism. Such an arrangement would more accurately be described as corporatism.

I'm not sure if my analogy is entirely appropriate since I'm not entirely certain about the specifics of the privatization in the Netherlands that Dorian is referring to. It all depends on whether these private companies were being paid with taxpayer dollars or not.

If they were being paid with taxpayer dollars, then I don't think their shortcomings can fairly be blamed on free market capitalism, since using taxpayer dollars to pay private companies, by its very definition, is not free market capitalism.

But I must leave you with a pertinent quote:
“There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.”
- Nigel Powers from “Goldmember”

Even the Democrats post-1994 looked at privatizing and contracting-out some government services, which wasn't going to lead inevitably to Blackwater or Halliburton scandals. (It made the unions mad, but the unions are dinosaur parasites, anyway.)

Let's just hope lib Dems don't run amok on this issue, too, and want to unionize as much as they can and make public rather than private as much as they can. (Didn't their role model the USSR teach any of them the right lessons?)

Sweden slashes income tax further to boost jobs
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.a30…

“The coalition government has agreed on reforms for jobs and entrepreneurialism that will increase employment in the long-term. It has to be more profitable to work and more companies should be able to hire employees,” the government said.

Since coming to power in late 2006, the government has launched a series of measures aimed at inciting Swedes to return to the job market instead of living off of state subsidies.

But instead of declining Sweden's unemployment rate has risen, from 5.7 percent in August 2006 to 8.0 percent in August 2009. Much of the increase has been attributed to the international economic crisis.

The government said it would also propose a series of measures in the budget bill aimed at boosting incentives to start companies and improve the business climate.

1 kronar = 0.146692 U.S. dollars so we are talking 99% of their people keeping an additional $6,817.00 of their earned money after the fourth leg and 75% keeping an additional $10,225.50 instead of feeding it to big government.