Did You Notice How Quickly The Free Market Swooped In To Take Over Head Start And Do It Even Better? Me Neither.


There’s nothing the government does, so I’m told,
That the free market doesn’t do better
So now with the government shutting its doors
And the market cut loose from its fetter
There is nothing to stop it from jumping right in—
Taking over, and doing things right—
Bureaucracy stood in its way until now,
But with government down, now it might!
So the kids who are staying at home for a bit
Cos the money was cut from Head Start?
The market should see an investment to make…
But they don’t. So the world falls apart.

Comments

  1. smrnda says

    I wish people would just take basic micro and macro econ, and then we’d understand why there’s no real incentive for the market to actually *do* certain things.

  2. Michael R says

    That’s ridiculous motivated reasoning. Business needs certainty before investment. The only thing certain is that government will soon resume operation, so why would a business invest in this short-term gap? They would have to be mad. You’re making up ridiculous arguments to fit your politics.

    Free markets aren’t always good, but neither are your arguments.

  3. says

    Not fair. The market cannot invest
    On such short notice and stopgap at best
    And with no certain future in sight.
    Guvment’s monopoly whip
    And religion’s curriculum grip
    Have left public schooling a blight.

    The market could set this a-right,
    But–what were you thinking–not overnight.

  4. carlie says

    “Short notice”? “overnight”? Head Start has been around since 1965 – any private company who thought they could do it better could have put up a competitor program at any time, confident in their belief that having a better product would mean that people would go to them instead of to the government one. And yet, nobody has, not at any point in the last 48 years.

  5. Cuttlefish says

    I’ve been in the daycare business. Carlie is the one seeing what I am talking about–for-profit daycares have a different clientele than my daycare did–interested, as you all note, in a short term bottom line. A long term investment that allows poor young parents to go to college, or to get job training? Not so much. And of course I know better than to expect an overnight growth of a brand new industry… my point, as Carlie’s, is that there has been plenty of time for a private safety net, but no incentive. It, as you note, is simply not something the free market does well. After all, it’s not like this was a social need that has been unrecognized.

  6. carlie says

    Oh, wow. Billionaire couple donates 10 million dollars to the Head Start programs in danger due to the government shutdown.

    Laura and John Arnold provided the money needed to reopen the seven Head Start programs in six states that were expecting to receive their federally allotted grants on Oct. 1 but were forced to close when the government closed many of their own offices on Tuesday, said Sally Aman, a Head Start spokeswoman.

    “We sincerely hope that our government gets back to work in short order, as private dollars cannot in the long term replace government commitments,” the Arnolds said in the statement.

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