While You Weren’t Looking, Donald Trump Released a Plan to Privatize America’s Roads and Bridges
Source: Slate
So this is kind of cute. While most of us were tearing our hair out over the FBI and Hillary Clinton's emails last weekend, Donald Trump's campaign quietly released a plan to privatize new infrastructure development in the United States. I know, that's not very sexy on the surface. But given that the man might be president come Tuesday, it seems worth remarking upon. Because it could mean we'll all be paying to drive on more roads built for profit.
Trump, as you might have noticed during this long, emotionally torturous campaign, likes to wax poetic about America's collapsing bridges and “third-world” airports, and he has vowed to fix up the country by doubling Hillary Clinton's proposed spending on infrastructure. At the same time, he’s also promised to pass gargantuan tax cuts while limiting the budget deficit.
This has all raised an obvious question: How, exactly, does America’s angriest clementine plan to pay for all of this building? I mean, Mexico isn't going to cover the wall and repairs to I-95, is it?
Thankfully, we now have an answer from two of Trump's chief economic advisers. In a report from Oct. 27, University of California–Irvine professor Peter Navarro and private equity honcho Wilbur Ross outlined how the candidate would transform about $167 billion of federal tax credits into $1 trillion of infrastructure spending. Factor in the effects of economic growth, they argued, and the cost to taxpayers would amount to zero, zilch, nada. Or, as they put it, the whole thing would be “budget neutral.”
Read more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/11/04/donald_trump_s_plan_to_privatize_america_s_roads_and_bridges.html
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bucolic_frolic
(50,788 posts)How's that trickle down worked out for you?
We can't even maintain the roads we have
All of America would look like Brooklyn
TRUMP IS CRAZY!!
HAB911
(9,692 posts)contract out the work then not pay them, voila!
DK504
(3,847 posts)work has been started or any one has been paid.
I'm sure everyone will be properly shocked and appalled. Especially those trolls that voted for The Great American Dumpster, would the FBI start an investigation, will Congress lift one fucking finger to impeach the great Grifter?
Sadly I don't think they will.
cstanleytech
(27,666 posts)dont count on him holding onto his side of the agreement.
vlyons
(10,252 posts)I've long said that the Republican party is a vast criminal enterprise, run by monopolistic oligarchs, who want to privatize everything that isn't nailed down. They are Ayn Randers at heart, who believe that all forms of socialism are immoral schemes to rob from the rich to give to the moochers. Never forget that Alan Greenspan was a head accolyte of Ayn Rand from the early days. And so we get jerks, who see profit in education, prisons, transportation, banks, food production, the military, even the post office for God's sake!
Close ties of interdependence and support among corporate monopolistic capitalists, a strong military police state, and authoritarian rule is a hallmark of Fascism. Wake up people.
Blue Idaho
(5,500 posts)Sadly what we have learned over and over again from these privatizing schemes is that they always deliver less and cost more. These Aynn Randian fantasies have been driving conservative thought since her first book was published. Everywhere they has been tried they have failed miserably.
UCmeNdc
(9,652 posts)Terrible idea.
cstanleytech
(27,666 posts)will rise.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)and, of course, the trucking companies will be exempted from paying tolls. Tolls are for little people.
Bette
(65 posts)Truckers have to pay and much more too,..more axels, and depending on double trailers too. And they are not happy about it. I have said so many times to look out, there will not only be all toll roads, but you'll need "papers" to go from one state to the next. possibly a pass port or pay to pass? We will in the end be 50 little countries before long. Nope, no longer united - but divided and you know that means we FALL.....
babylonsister
(172,132 posts)
Kashkakat v.2.0
(1,939 posts)sell stuff off cheap at bargain prices to the cronies.
mainer
(12,340 posts)because these private companies are going to want their profits.
Historic NY
(39,022 posts)I pay over 35.00 dollars just to use I-95 from NJ to DC. between the road, bridges and tunnels Just think how much a private company would charge.
Mc Mike
(9,216 posts)
milestogo
(20,832 posts)
jmowreader
(52,398 posts)
"If it isn't nailed down, we'll steal it. If it is nailed down, we'll pull all the nails."
nolabear
(43,735 posts)The metaphor for what he'd do to this country is perfect. He would literally sell it and watch it crumble.
rtracey
(2,062 posts)heres how it will work...all roads and bridges will become toll roads to be paid to private companies...the tolls will go up and up every year.....thats the way I see it...
SunSeeker
(55,996 posts)
forest444
(5,902 posts)And guess where most of the proceeds would end up:
bdamomma
(68,539 posts)for the American people. He can't relate to the American people not with silver spoon down his throat. Just disgusting
forest444
(5,902 posts)The crude, caddish, arrogant, deadbeat vulgarian they wish they could be - and still get away with it. Because I guess Reagan just isn't crass enough for them anymore (and to be fair, Reagan was, by almost all accounts, a real gentleman).
That might explain Trump's male supporters; as for the ladies who, being women as they are, still support Trump...I was hoping you could explain that to me because I certainly can't (envy against Hillary, maybe?).
benld74
(10,116 posts)Their brains go into neutral
Not thinking how easy it is to
Do some damn research on the subject!!
😡
mobeau69
(12,005 posts)They went bankrupt soon after. Now sold again to a new Austrialian group. Meanwhile, this once great road is now a total mess and it's getting worse by the day. Where is it written that all state projects need to make money? If that's the case, IN should put IU on the block and allow some private investor to destroy this IN gem just like they did with the Toll Road.
jeffreyi
(2,371 posts)Our national forests parks wildlife refuges blm public lands as well.
Midnight Writer
(24,161 posts)We all know that our roads will be better maintained by a for profit company that doesn't answer to voters.
moonscape
(5,546 posts)wants to Trumpize them. Bidding will begin, and Trumanka, Trumperic, and Trumpdon companies will compete for the contracts fairly, all other companies not having acquired bidding approval.
dembotoz
(16,922 posts)
dflprincess
(28,841 posts)