Public services is a term usually used to mean services A service is the intangible equivalent of a good. Service provision is often an economic activity where the buyer does not generally, except by exclusive contract, obtain exclusive ownership of the thing purchased. The benefits of such a service, if priced, are held to be self-evident in the buyers willingness to pay for it. Public services are provided by government A government is the organization, or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects to its citizens Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities. "Active citizenship" is the philosophy that citizens should work towards the betterment of their community through economic participation, public , volunteer work, and other such efforts to improve life for all citizens. In this vein,, either directly (through the public sector The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector is a part of the state that deals with either the production, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal) or by financing private provision of services. The term is associated with a social consensus (usually expressed through democratic Democracy is a political form of government where governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). The term comes from the Greek: δημοκρατία – (dēmokratía) "rule of the people", which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) & elections) that certain services should be available to all, regardless of income Income is the consumption and savings opportunity gained by an entity within a specified time frame, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. However, for households and individuals, "income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents and other forms of earnings received... in a given period of time.". Even where public services are neither publicly provided nor publicly financed, for social and political reasons they are usually subject to regulation Regulation is "controlling human or societal behavior by rules or restrictions." Regulation can take many forms: legal restrictions promulgated by a government authority, self-regulation by an industry such as through a trade association, social regulation , co-regulation and market regulation. One can consider regulation as actions of going beyond that applying to most economic sectors The economy may be classified into subdivisions called sectors in several ways. Sectors may be further subdivided into subsectors. Public services is also a course that can be studied at college and/or university. These courses can lead entry in to the: police, ambulance and fire services.
Public service tend to be those considered so essential to modern life that for moral A moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. As an example of the latter, at the end of Aesop's fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, in which the plodding and determined tortoise wins a reasons their universal provision should be guaranteed, and they may be associated with fundamental human rights Human rights are "rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Proponents of the concept usually assert that everyone is endowed with certain entitlements merely by reason of being human (such as the right to water). An example of a service which is not generally considered an essential public service is hairdressing A hairstyle, hairdo, or haircut refers to the styling of head hair. The fashioning of hair can be considered an aspect of personal grooming, fashion, and cosmetics, although practical considerations also influence some hairstyles. Hairstyles are also influenced by various subcultures.The Volunteer Fire Dept. and Ambulance Corps. are institutions with the mission of servicing the community. A service is helping others with a specific need or want. Service ranges from a doctor curing an illness, to a repair man, to even a food pantry. All of these services are important in people's lives.
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Characteristics
A public service may sometimes have the characteristics of a public good In economics, a public good is a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Non-rivalry means that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and non-excludability that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good. In the real world, there may be no such thing as an (being non-rivalrous In economics, a good is considered either rivalrous or nonrival. Rival goods are goods whose consumption by one consumer prevents simultaneous consumption by other consumers. Most goods, both durable and nondurable, are rival goods. A hammer is a durable rival good. One person's use of the hammer presents a significant barrier to others who desire and non-excludable), but most are merit goods The concept of a merit good introduced in economics by Richard Musgrave is a commodity which is judged that an individual or society should have on the basis of some concept of need, rather than ability and willingness to pay. The term is, perhaps, less often used today than it was in the 1960s to 1980s but the concept still lies behind many, that is, services which may (according to prevailing social norms Social norms are the behavioral expectations and cues within a society or group. This sociological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit. Failure to follow the rules can result in severe punishments, including) be under-provided by the market A market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy. It is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to exchange things. Competition is essential in markets, and separates market from trade. In most cases public services are services A service is the intangible equivalent of a good. Service provision is often an economic activity where the buyer does not generally, except by exclusive contract, obtain exclusive ownership of the thing purchased. The benefits of such a service, if priced, are held to be self-evident in the buyers willingness to pay for it. Public services are, i.e. they do not involve manufacturing of goods In macroeconomics and accounting, a good is contrasted with a service. In this sense, a good is defined as a physical product, capable of being delivered to a purchaser and involves the transfer of ownership from seller to customer, say an apple, as opposed to an (intangible) service, say a haircut. A more general term that preserves the such as nuts A nut is a type of hardware fastener with a threaded hole. Nuts are almost always used opposite a mating bolt to fasten a stack of parts together. The two partners are kept together by a combination of their threads' friction, a slight stretch of the bolt, and compression of the parts. In applications where vibration or rotation may work a nut and bolts. They may be provided by local or national monopolies, especially in sectors which are natural monopolies Natural monopolies arise where the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, has an overwhelming cost advantage over other actual and potential competitors. This tends to be the case in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale which are large in relation to the size of the market, and.
They may involve outputs that are hard to attribute to specific individual effort and/or hard to measure in terms of key characteristics such as quality. They often require high levels of training and education. They may attract people with a public service ethos who wish to give something to the wider public or community through their work and are prepared to work harder for less pay as a result. (John Kenneth Galbraith John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith, OC was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism and progressivism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 1970s and he filled the role of public intellectual in this period on matters has looked at the role of such "public virtue" in economic growth.)
History
Historically History is the study of the human past. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it sometimes attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events. Historians debate the nature of history and its, the widespread provision of public services in developed countries usually began in the late nineteenth century, often with the municipal A municipality is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly denotes a city, town, or village, or a small grouping of them. A municipality is typically governed by a mayor and a city council or municipal council development of gas Gas is one of four classical states of matter. Near absolute zero, a substance exists as a solid. As heat is added to this substance it melts into a liquid at its melting point , boils into a gas at its boiling point, and if heated high enough would enter a plasma state in which the electrons are so energized that they leave their parent atoms and water Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. Its molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state, water vapor or steam services. Later, other services such as electricity Electricity is a general term that encompasses a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning and static electricity, but in addition, less familiar concepts, such as the electromagnetic field and electromagnetic induction and healthcare Health care or healthcare is the treatment and prevention of illness. Health care is delivered by professionals in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy and allied health began to be provided by governments. In most developed countries such services are still provided by local or national government, the biggest exceptions being the U.S. ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language and the UK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land, where private provision is more significant. Nonetheless, such privately-provided public services are often strongly regulated, for example (in the US) by Public Utility Commissions.
In developing countries Developing country is a term generally used to describe a nation with a low level of material well being. There is no single internationally-recognized definition of developed country, and the levels of development may vary widely within so-called developing countries, with some developing countries having high average standards of living public services tend to be much less well developed. Water services, for example, may only be available to the wealthy Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions or the control of such assets. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem. An individual, community, region or country that possesses an abundance of such possessions or resources is known as wealthy middle class The middle class are any class in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class. In Marxist terms, middle class commonly refers to either the bourgeoisie before or during capitalism[. For political Politics , is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and refers reasons the service is often subsidised A subsidy is a form of financial assistance paid to a business or economic sector. Most subsidies are made by the government to producers or distributors in an industry to prevent the decline of that industry (e.g., as a result of continuous unprofitable operations) or an increase in the prices of its products or simply to encourage it to hire, which reduces the finance available for expansion to poorer communities.
Nationalization
Main article: Nationalization Nationalization, also spelled nationalisation, is the act of taking an industry or assets into the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being transferred to the public sector to be operated by orNationalization really took off following the World Wars of the first half of the twentieth century. Across Europe, because of the extreme demands on industries and the economy, central planning Economic planning refers to any directing or planning of economic activity by an economic actor, usually the state, in an attempt to achieve specific economic or social outcomes. Planning is an economic mechanism for resource allocation and decision-making in contrast with the market mechanism; however most economies incorporate elements of both was required to ensure the maximum degree of efficient production was obtained. Many public services, especially electricity, gas and public transport were products of this era. Following the second world war, many countries also began to implement universal health care Universal health care is a system of organized health-care systems built around the principle of universal coverage for all members of society, combining mechanisms for health financing and service provision and expanded education under the funding and guidance of the state.
Privatization
A group of Chilean Chile (traditional English pronunciation /ˈtʃɪli/, also pronounced /ˈtʃiːleɪ/ ), officially the Republic of Chile (Spanish: República de Chile [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈtʃile] ( listen)), is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders 'Damas de Rojo', volunteers on their local hospital. Main article: Privatization Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector (businesses that operate for a private profit) or to private non-profit organizations. In a broader sense, privatization refers to transfer of any government function to the privateThere are several ways to privatise public services. A free-market corporation may be established and sold to private investors, relinquishing government control altogether. This essentially ends the public service and makes it a private service. Another option, used in the Nordic countries The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories which include the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Svalbard and Åland. Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for the Nordic countries, although within the Nordic countries, is to establish a corporation, but keep ownership or voting power essentially in the hands of the government. For example, the Finnish state Finland (pronounced /ˈfɪnlənd/ ), officially the Republic of Finland Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland (help·info), is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden on the west, Norway on the north and Russia on the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland owned 49% of Kemira Kemira Oyj is a chemical industry group that consists of three main segments. Kemira is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, the rest being owned by private investors. A 49% share doesn't make it a "government enterprise", but it means that all other investors together would have to oppose the state's opinion in order to overturn the state's decisions in the shareholder's meeting. Regulated corporation can also acquire permits on the agreement that they fulfill certain public service duties. When a private corporation runs a natural monopoly Natural monopolies arise where the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, has an overwhelming cost advantage over other actual and potential competitors. This tends to be the case in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale which are large in relation to the size of the market, and, then the corporation is typically heavily regulated, to prevent abuse of monopoly power. Lastly, the government can buy the service on the free market. In many countries, medication A pharmaceutical drug, also referred to as medicine, medication or medicament, can be loosely defined as any chemical substance intended for use in the medical diagnosis, cure, treatment, or prevention of disease is provided in this manner: the government reimburses part of the price of the medication. Also, bus traffic, electricity, healthcare and waste management are privatized in this way. One recent innovation, used in the UK increasingly as well as Australia and Canada is public-private partnerships Public-private partnership describes a government service or private business venture which is funded and operated through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies. These schemes are sometimes referred to as PPP, P3 or P3. This involves giving a long lease to private consortia in return for partly funding infrastructure.
Public services versus Services of General Interest
At the European level, some countries use the name service of general interest The common good is a term that can refer to several different concepts. In the popular meaning, the common good describes a specific "good" that is shared and beneficial for all members of a given community. This is also how the common good is broadly defined in philosophy, ethics, and political science, while other prefer public services. It has been a discussion, for instance during the writing of the european constitution The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe , (commonly referred to as the European Constitution or as the Constitutional Treaty), was an unratified international treaty intended to create a consolidated constitution for the European Union (EU). It would have replaced the existing European Union treaties with a single text, given legal force (the word services of general interest has been used).
ETUC]] named its petition "for high quality public services" but explains "Public services are known as Services of general interest (SGI) and Services of general economic interest (SGEIs) in European Union terminology."
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:30:47 GMT+00:00
The Guardian Guardian awards Guardian Public Services Awards 2010 Guardian Charity Awards 2010 SocietyGuardian Social Enterprise Summit We are starting to plan this ...
Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:17:31 PDT
An overview of the services available to Cass County, North Dakota residents, including travel immunizations and family planning. video.google.com.
