From Forbes.com: Imagine For A Moment If President Obama Ran Disneyworld

By Jeffrey Dorfman, professor of economics at the University of Georgia and consultant on economic issues to corporations and local governments:

...it seems worthwhile to conduct a hypothetical experiment about what it would be like if the federal government ran a theme park.

First, if tourists planning a trip to our theme park try to get information about the park or make reservations online, they will fail. Unfortunately, our government-run theme park has very little information on its website, you need to create an account and provide personal financial information before you can find out more about visiting the park, and the website will freeze when you try to actually purchase tickets for your planned visit.

There is a phone number you can call and after an average three hour wait, tickets can be purchased over the phone.

If our tourists still show up for a theme park vacation, the first surprise will be the admission price to the park. Instead of the usual tickets with set prices for adults, children, and senior citizens, the government-run theme park has prices that vary by family income. If the family makes less than $40,000 per year, the tickets are free. Families earning between $40,000 and $75,000 per year pay $25 per ticket and those earning from $75,000 to 100,000 pay $50 per ticket. All these families get to visit the theme park for prices less than the true cost of a visit to the park; the government is subsidizing their vacations.

The government pays for these subsidies partly by over-charging the wealthier tourists. If a family makes between $100,000 and $200,000 per year, they pay $100 per ticket. Families that earn over $200,000 per year must pay $500 per ticket.

Once in the park, the family is faced with three hour waits for the popular rides, but the park managers don’t care that customers have to wait; after all, they are government employees and their pay in no way depends on the profitability of the theme park or on customer satisfaction.

In fact, the employees are paid an average of $30 per hour with great benefits, more pay and better benefits than the average private sector worker. Plus, the park closes at 5:00 p.m. every day because the government employee unions fought against longer work hours in their latest contract negotiation.

At lunchtime, you have to go to the far corner of the theme park to find the single restaurant. Once there, you wait 30 minutes to order your lunch and another 30 minutes for the food to arrive.

The prices are again based on income, with free lunches for anyone with family income below $40,000, lunch prices of $5 per person if the family income is between $40,000 and $100,000, and lunches costing $20 per person for families earning over $100,000 per year. About one quarter of the orders are wrong when the food is delivered, but nobody sends the food back because it would be another 30 minute wait for the corrected order.

Another surprise for the vacationers is that 40 percent of the park is Senior Land, a special section of the theme park designed for senior citizens.

People over 65 years old get free admission to the park and are the only visitors allowed into Senior Land. There, they can enjoy gentle rides and live shows for entertainment all designed especially for the older visitor. The seniors are not disturbed by unruly children and there are very rarely any lines in the Senior Land section of the theme park.

Even with the higher-priced tickets for wealthier families, the park loses money, partly due to the cheaper tickets for poorer families but mostly due to all the expenses of running Senior Land without any offsetting ticket revenue.

However, the politicians and bureaucrats in charge of the government-run theme park do not consider cutting back on the expenses in Senior Land nor do they consider charging senior citizens for the benefits enjoyed because seniors vote at much higher rates than other citizens and so have a lot of political clout.

To improve the park’s finances the government passes a new regulation and a new tax. The regulation requires everyone to make one visit per year to the theme park.

If a family does not visit the park, they must pay a penalty on their income taxes. The government knows it can require actions under threat of a tax penalty thanks to the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act. The new tax charges every working adult in the country $50 per year in exchange for the free admission to the park once they turn 65.

It turns out that these changes are not sufficient to fix the park’s finances because the extra tax revenue is offset by the (mandatory) extra visits by lower-earning families who get in for free or reduced prices. Unable to solve the problem by tax increases and unwilling to cut the subsidies to lower-income or elderly park visitors, the government decides to take a different route.

The government declares that its attempt to reform the theme park industry with a hybrid model combining private sector features with government control has failed because of the private sector components and competition from corporate theme parks who are too interested in profit and keeping customers happy instead of social engineering. Therefore, the government nationalizes the theme park industry.

All privately owned theme parks are forced to close or sell to the government.

The government leaves many of the parks closed, but it operates several using the same system as in the theme park described above. While the government is now losing several hundred billion dollars per year on theme parks, it forgoes further actions to address this deficit and declares its new theme park reform a success because all families in the country can now afford to go to a theme park.

This hypothetical discussion of theme parks may seem silly to some readers, but nobody should believe that big government aficionados are planning to stop with health care.

Theme parks are unlikely to be the next government takeover target, but some industry will be targeted. Make no mistake about that.
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Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2013/11/07/imagine-for-a-moment-if-president-obama-ran-disneyworld/