Author: Dr. Jeffrey S. Young, Assistant Professor, Agribusiness Economics, Murray State University
And we’re back! We’ve been having a lot of fun with this survey, and I sure hope you’ve had fun learning along with us as we discover new things from the data. We started this journey with examining the public’s trust of large institutions, then we drilled into their confidence placed in the federal government and the economy overall. But regardless of how much confidence is in the government versus the private system, who should be in charge of what, and to what degree?
This ‘who’s in charge here?’ question is precisely what we’re addressing now. There’s much debate about the U.S. healthcare system, whether or not natural resources are being sufficiently protected, regulations in and around the airline industry, and a bunch of other public-private tensions boiling over right now.
What is the general opinion of what should be under government versus private control? Check out Figure 1 below.
Figure 1. Insights into the public-private picture.
In the 1 (totally private) to 7 (totally public) ranking, the median of “4” represents a perfect split between zero government intervention and total government control. Thus, constructs ranked over a 4 means the average opinion is that there should be more government intervention than private control; anything less than a 4 means the people want that construct to be under more privatization; and anything close enough to a 4 means the opinion is either split or finds a private-public split the preferable solution (maybe partnership-style hybrid management model?).
Those averaging over a 4 are parks and recreation (fantastic show, by the way), natural resource management, fire services, domestic police protection, and the military. Those averaging less than a 4 are grocery and food procurement services, banking and financial services, and air travel. Those within a rounding error of a 4 are education and the healthcare, pharmaceutical, and medical industry.
A final observation is that the polarization is skewed far more towards government than private sector. Look at the difference on the “more private” side: +28% for food & groceries, +14% for banking, and just 2% for air travel. On the “more public” side, we have +49% for military, +27% for police, and +25% for fire.
In general, this tells us (or at least it tells me) the public is perhaps more dependent on government leadership (or even assistance) than we often care to admit, or at the very least, the average American is warming up more to the idea of publicly funded and administrated social amenities than they may have been once.
ConsumerCorner.2022.Letter.7
