Why is the "private sector" better than the "public sector"?

[badtoworse]

105. In my (non-economist) opinion money derives its value from the good and services you can buy with it

Today's money has no intrinsic value and is only valuable to the extent that it has purchasing power. It's a tool for measuring "value" and simplifies what would otherwise be a complicated, awkward barter system for conducting transactions. If you make $50,000 per year, it would be just as accurate to measure your salary in terms of the groceries, gasoline, rent, entertainment, etc. that you can obtain with that much money. Those goods and services represent the value of that much money, but that value was created by the farmer that grew the crops, the trucking company that brought them to market and the grocer that sold them. The value in the gasoline was created by the E&P company, the refiner, the trucker and the gas station owner. All of that value was created by private sector workers and businesses.

Government needs goods and services (i.e., things that have value) so it levies taxes and uses the money to pay for them. It took a portion of the value that was created by the private sector; it did not create the value itself. There is only so much "value" created in an economy (I think they call this something like GDP) and printing more money won't create value; it should result in money with less buying power.

There are situations where the government can add value, but these involve the government operating at a profit. A government getting royalties from leasing land to energy production is an example. Another would be a federal power agency (like Bonneville) selling electricity. The Post Office would be an example if it was turning a profit. There are ways the government can indircetly add value, such educating the kids. I would look at these examples as the government investing the value created in the private sector and generating a return. The key point is the government would not have been able to do any of those things without drawing value from the private sector in the form of taxes (Sure, public employees pay taxes, but their jobs came about because that government entity was initially funded by some private sector worker paying his taxes).

I don't agree that Greece is irrelevant because it's not a sovereign currency. The reality is that it is not getting enough "value" from its citizens in the form of taxes to pay its bills. If it did have the capability to print more money and did that, bond yields would still soar and prices would skyrocket. That may be different than the current situation, but it doesn't sound like it's an improvement.

I'm not an economist; I'm an engineer by background and I've worked in the electric power business for the last 30 years. Maybe my view is simplistic, but it seems logical to me. Waat is your background?