Re: More privatisation

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard Titmuss on blood donations might be useful.  Also, his work on the
mitigation of social costs in Britain during WW 2.


On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 02:58:29PM -0800, Bill Burgess wrote:
> As it happens I am doing something very similar, as part of an effort to
> figure out why personal income _inequality_ is strongly (negatively)
> related to (age-adjusted) mortality rates in US cities, but not in Canadian
> cities. In other words, do more -- and more equal -- public goods in
> Canadian cities (schools, transit, libraries, sewers, etc.) mitigate some
> of the negative effects of personal income inequality that prevail in the
> US?  (Of course, personal income itself is also strongly negatively related
> to mortality, but an additional? inequality effect seems to apply over the
> range of income.)
>
> BTW, some good recent work on the relation of income inequality and
> mortality is by Australian epidemiologist John Lynch. He offers a
> "neo-material" explanation for this relation in place of some of the
> 'social capital' ideas (trust, cohesion, civic participation, etc.)
> recently discussed on Pen-L.
>
> If anyone is working on similar points, please contact me to compare notes.
>
> Bill Burgess
>
> >On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 12:15:07AM +1100, Rob Schaap wrote:
> > > G'day all,
> > >
> > > I see the best-cities-to-live-in poll for the year is out.  If memory
> > serves,
> > > Vancouver came top and the likes of Vienna, Geneva and Sydney were
> > runners up
> > > (my favourites, Melbourne and Amsterdam did well, too - and if these
> > gits had
> > > bothered to visit Hobart' Oz would have had the winner, too).  Anyway, the
> > > reason I bring this up is because the salient virtue of these places
> > (against
> > > traditional faves like London and Paris) are apparently the quality of
> > *public
> > > services* and the capacity of leading candidates to resist the inhuman
> > pace of
> > > life of our age.  I'm not suggesting such poncy convocations constitute an
> > > unimpeachable source (although the bottom-of-the-listers, Brazzaville and
> > > Baghdad, are not destinations of mine right now, either), but I do suggest
> > > there's a job for an idle economist out there in the collection of the
> > sort of
> > > data economists don't count (you could add suicide rates, all those focus
> > > group reports on quality-of-life priorities, Australian state election exit
> > > polls, intra-city and inter-state migration trends,
> > letters-to-the-editor, and
> > > a whole lot of the sort of stuff you often find buried in little columns on
> > > page 6 of the Sunday papers).  My suspicion is that, taken together, such a
> > > project would produce a monumental wall of evidence against
> > privatisation in
> > > particular and the existence of homo economicus in general.
> > >
> > > Does anyone do this sort of thing?
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Rob.
> > >
> >
> >--
> >Michael Perelman
> >Economics Department
> >California State University
> >Chico, CA 95929
> >
> >Tel. 530-898-5321
> >E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx