"Failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina shares roots with proposals to privatize Social Security and the substitution of user fees and private purchase regimes for public provision of services. Inadequate public assistance to move the sick and elderly from New Orleans hospitals, like earlier inadequate investment in levee repair, reflects a widespread pattern: the reduction of public provision of public goods in favor of reliance on private markets or just plain tax cuts. Social institutions built over generations are being systematically unfunded and dismantled. In other words, the inadequate government response stemmed not only from incompetence but from policy."