Jae Myung Lee, the mayor of Seong Nam City, has come out with a policy called “youth dividend,” which is currently being used to give young adults in the city a certain amount of money each term. However, unlike the original purpose of this particular welfare system, many critics have argued that this policy is inefficient because it gives out money to all young adults regardless of their different situations. To tend to such inefficiencies of the ‘national government,’ the effective methods of ‘local government,’ such as public firm privatization, could be utilized. To make the best use of such methods, the efforts of the local government must be consolidated.
Despite the fact that a welfare-focused national government was preferred by the state’s citizens since the olden times, many people also aired their opinions that the local government might be needed to tend to the national government’s efforts due to fluctuation in the social structure. There are two main shortcomings of the national government. First, their welfare policies could not be applied to every individual. Thus, actions to promote equality led to opposite results, such as the poor and the rich receiving the same amount of money when the poor obviously needs more support. Second, due to the stability ofgovernment-run firms, workers tended not to do their best. Thisled to the lack of productivity and the slow development of the state.
Public Enterprise Privatization, a method commonly used by small governments, could be a way to tend to the lack of productivity and efficiency by strengthening its strong points and revising its weak ones. Since increasing profits is the main objective of a private firm, it could increase profitsefficiently and deliver positive effects to the nation’s economy.For example, KT Telecom, which was originally a publicfirm, produced significant results in the IT market after it wasprivatized, and KT&G, a tobacco company that was also a public firm, is now the world’s 7th largest tobacco company,proving that privatization leads to profits and benefits, and, in turn, the nation’s development. On the other hand, privatization can be misused for the government or the firm’s own needs, such as when former president Lee Myung-bak government privatized a portion of the Incheon Airport, and sold its stocks to foreign investors. People were infuriated by this development, and argued that the government was only doing so to get on good terms with influential foreign investors withoutconsidering public benefit at all.
To tend to such misuses of privatization, NGOs or social associations could request for the formation of laws that would punish anyone whose motives for gaining personalbenefits exceeded the motives of the society’s productivity anddevelopment by a certain limit that would also be settled during the process. The limit could be set through meetings with lawmakers, NGOs, and professionals in this particular field. Also, social associations and NGOs could expose privatization misuse to citizens through media so that citizens would be morealert and aware, and that the government or firms could refrainfrom such wrongdoings.
To sum it up, the local government could tend to the side effects of the national government. The local government’s methods would bring productivity and development to the state. However, the local government also has certain issues to look after. Its methods could be misused for the selfishbenefits of either the firms or the governments. This could besolved through the active monitoring of NGOs and social associations, and the awareness and attention of concerned citizen
