The Public Option: How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality

by Ganesh Sitaraman, Anne L. Alstott

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674987333
Publisher:	Harvard
Publication date:	07/01/2019
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	635,023
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Ganesh Sitaraman is Chancellor Faculty Fellow, Professor of Law, and Director of the Program in Law and Government at Vanderbilt Law School. He is a columnist for Guardian US and has been a longtime advisor to Senator Elizabeth Warren, serving as her policy director and senior counsel. He is the author of The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic, a New York Times Notable Book.

Anne L. Alstott is the Jacquin D. Bierman Professor at Yale Law School and author of A New Deal for Old Age, among other books. She has won her school’s top teaching award five times in her twenty-six-year career. She has written or cowritten pieces for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and Slate, and has appeared on the public radio programs Marketplace and On Point.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1 Understanding the Public Option

1 The Limits of Private Action 11

2 Why Public Options? 24

3 The Theory of the Public Option 44

4 Caveats and Counterarguments 66

Part 2 The History of the Public Option

5 Public Libraries, Social Security, and Other Successes 97

6 Mixed Results in Education and Housing 110

Part 3 The Public Option and Public Policy

7 Retirement 129

8 Higher Education 149

9 Banking 169

10 Child Care 181

11 Health Care 202

12 And More 223

Notes 235

Acknowledgments 275

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/13/2019

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. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Timely, important, and convincing, this book is pretty much the definition of ‘fresh thinking.’ Key reading for a political generation that is on the search for new ideas for old problems.

Tim Wu

Makes a compelling case for affordable government-funded services that coexist with private options.

ProMarket

At a time of widespread debates about the role of public provision, Sitaraman and Alstott make a vibrant case for developing and preserving public options in education, health care, child care, broadband access, banking, and retirement benefits. To get beyond slogans and move toward real and practical proposals to improve the daily lives of Americans, and strengthen our commitments to others, read this book.

Martha Minow

In this timely and stirring call for reform, two of our nation’s smartest policy thinkers recapture our past to chart our future. Sitaraman and Alstott remind us that Americans have long supported policies that offer a choice between government and the private sector, and they show us how this model—the public option—could provide innovative solutions to perennial challenges facing child care, retirement savings, higher education, and much more.

Jacob S. Hacker

Their proposal is not that the public sector should displace the private sector, but rather that offering a publicly-run alternative would expand everyone’s choices and ensure that no one is left too far behind.

Project Syndicate - Simon Johnson

We are so accustomed to arguments that government only infringes upon freedom that we forget how government, when intelligently deployed, can expand our choices—and yes, make us more free. In this important book Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott make a brilliant, clear, and accessible case for how public options in areas such as banking, health care, and child care can improve lives, especially for those whom the marketplace marginalizes. We already celebrate many public options, such as our great public universities and libraries. Sitaraman and Alstott urge us to think inventively about other areas where public options could make our nation both better and fairer.

E. J. Dionne

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