The Public Option
How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
A solution to inequalities wherever we look—in health care, secure retirement, education—is as close as the public library. Or the post office, community pool, or local elementary school. Public options—reasonably priced government-provided services that coexist with private options—are all around us, ready to increase opportunity, expand freedom, and reawaken civic engagement if we will only let them.
Whenever you go to your local public library, send mail via the post office, or visit Yosemite, you are taking advantage of a longstanding American tradition: the public option. Some of the most useful and beloved institutions in American life are public options—yet they are seldom celebrated as such. These government-supported opportunities coexist peaceably alongside private options, ensuring equal access and expanding opportunity for all.
Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott challenge decades of received wisdom about the proper role of government and consider the vast improvements that could come from the expansion of public options. Far from illustrating the impossibility of effective government services, as their critics claim, public options hold the potential to transform American civic life, offering a wealth of solutions to seemingly intractable problems, from housing shortages to the escalating cost of health care.
Imagine a low-cost, high-quality public option for child care. Or an extension of the excellent Thrift Savings Plan for federal employees to all Americans. Or every person having access to an account at the Federal Reserve Bank, with no fees and no minimums. From broadband internet to higher education, The Public Option reveals smart new ways to meet pressing public needs while spurring healthy competition. More effective than vouchers or tax credits, public options could offer us all fairer choices and greater security.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Looking to public schools, libraries, and post offices for inspiration, law professors Sitaraman (The Crisis of the Middle Class Constitution) and Alstott (A New Deal for Old Age) make an enthusiastic, accessible, and convincing case that more "public option" government services would significantly improve the quality of life for average Americans. At present, they observe, employer-provided and market-based solutions for health care and retirement needs leave a large swath of people vulnerable. Providing universally accessible baseline options to coexist with private products for health care, retirement planning, child care, banking, and higher education would, they argue, promote equality of opportunity, and benefit small businesses and market competition, particularly in industries dominated by de facto monopolies. The authors explain that public options have benefits not conferred by subsidies and vouchers (which tend to push up prices rather than ensure universal accessibility) or regulation; analyze the relative successes of familiar public options such as the post office, public libraries, and Social Security; and argue that the more mixed results in public education are due to segregation and political calcification. They succeed in their goal of establishing the general merits of public options and offering a refreshingly "pragmatic look at what government can do well." This eminently accessible work will engage budding policy wonks and civic-minded readers.
