>>I have been researching where American conservative billionaires and
multi-millionaires have been putting their non-capital money recently,
and the major effort seems to be in privatizing education. They are
spending hundreds of millions, perhaps billions a year in this effort.
Last year, the Walton Family Foundation gave over $10 million to just one privatize schools effort, CEO America. It seems clear to me that this is their next big push, privatizing social security and that sort of thing is more of a long-term plan.>>
I'd say it's already further along than you think, and it's not 'non-capital money' but good old capital in search of profits from the public feeding trough. One interesting twist is state pension funds acting as super-sized investment firms or funds putting money into private equity/venture capital plays, which includes making money from privatization, including privatization of education. This makes sense in the US because the federal government's HUGE monopoly is military and 'national security and intelligence', but at local levels (such as the local 'school board'), school systems are a type of government with huge numbers of employees and huge amounts of money being pumped into them from local, state and federal governments. Now privatization of retirements are already reality in the US, unless you are so far down on the income scale that social security really is your retirement instead of a minor supplement, so education is seen as one of the best frontiers for capital to make money from the public purse. Suggested reading:
http://www.wsibmonitor.org/privatization.htm
http://www.carlyle.com/eng/industry/industryportfoliol5-1842.html
http://www.edisonproject.com/home/home.cfm
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7252063.htm?1c
http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/CERU/Documents/EPSL-0301-102-CERU.pdf#search='education%20companies'
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