Public Assets Quotes

No nation is interested in assimilating another without good reason. The assimilation of foreigners is actually in itself a most unpleasant business, and hence also undesirable. New people mean new candidates for benefits from the accumulated public assets, new hands hungrily stretched out for a share of the common loaf of bread. In order for a nation to desire the assimilation of another social group, it must first see in it something so valuable and attractive as to make it worthwhile despite all the inconvenience of including new partners in the distribution of the assets.

Privatization of assets that most of us consider public goods - like airports and highways - has a long, often-uncontroversial history.

Instead of incentivizing quick, short-term decisions, the federal government should be asking the tough questions when governments turn over publicly funded transportation assets to for-profit operators.

Selling public property is the true Chicago way. Had Mr. Obama not been elected president, the nation's business journals would be falling over one another to praise his city for its daring, market-friendly innovations.

I am going to leave this car as property of the nation. But meanwhile I shall use it myself.

We need to privatize whenever possible.

The public lands are a public stock, which ought to be disposed of to the best advantage for the nation.

Not on my watch will we sell or transfer our public lands.

The oil companies don’t own the resources…. We own the resources.

Chicago's privatization mania began during Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration, which ran from 1989 to 2011. Under his successor, Rahm Emanuel, the trend has continued apace. For Rahm's investment banker buddies, the trend has been a boon. For citizens? Not so much.

In various countries around the world, assets that had previously been in the hands of governments were sold off to the private sector in the hope that this would lead to a more efficient allocation, that these assets would be put to better use.

There are goods that are outside trade and in the public domain and that should be reserved and protected.

Did you know that the state is the proud owner of a condo complex in Conway? This budget adds a real estate manager position to assess what we own, and sell those properties that we don't need and shouldn't own.

I say we have not even had the decency to maintain the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us - our roads, our bridges, our wastewater systems, our sewer systems; by the way, those weren't Bolsheviks, those weren't socialists that built those things for us - much less build the infrastructure we need for the 21st century.

The sun doesn't just hang on one family's tree

The purchasers of public lands are among the most useful of our fellow citizens …. Under the system of sales, matured as it has been by experience, and adapted to the exigencies of the times, the lands will continue as they have become, an abundant source of revenue.

Even before he came to power in 1997, Gordon Brown promised to change the accounts to parliament from simple litanies of cash in and cash out, to a more commercial system that took notice of the public property the departments were using. This system is known as resource accounting.

When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register, which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury 'the modern Domesday Book.'

Whether you agree or disagree with privatization, two things are obvious. First, taxpayers need to be asking more and better questions before handing over control of critical public assets like a highway, an airport, or a parking meter concession. And second, Uncle Sam is being played for a sucker.

The best measure of how a democracy is functioning is how it allocates the goods of the land, the public trust assets.

It is true, indeed, that the national domain is ours. It is true it was acquired by the valor and with the wealth of the whole nation. But we hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary power over it.

The largest investment that most communities have is their school buildings.

If you want your debt lifted you've got to sell your school and your hospitals.

On the other hand, the American public possesses a great resilience and strength, and good risk communication strategies can tap into and even amplify those assets.

Auctioning of natural resources such as spectrum, coal, oilfields, and land for commercial exploitation can largely substitute for tax impositions.