The right likes it better but the left does it better

This Naked Capitalism post, "More Public Infrastructure Sale Tales of Woe," reminded me of an apt observation Felix Salmon made a couple of weeks ago while discussing Scott Walker's privatization proposals:

It probably comes as little surprise to note that the most lucrative privatizations have generally been done by parties of the left: I’m thinking in particular of the UK’s auction of 3G licenses, which netted the Exchequer $35.4 billion at the height of the dot-com bubble.

Right-wing parties, by contrast, are more prone to thinking of privatization as something inherently good, and of monies flowing to the government as a kind of taxation which is inherently bad.