https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/10/scam-alert-trumps-1tn-infrastructure-plan
I suggest reading the whole article at the following link.
Robert Reich
June 10, 2017
At a roundtable discussion with state transportation officials on Friday, Donald Trump said America’s ageing roads, bridges, railways, and water systems were being “scoffed at and laughed” at. He pledged that they “will once again be the envy of the world”.
This seems to be a core theme for Trump: America’s greatness depends on others envying us rather than scoffing and laughing at us.
[While his tweets and actions causes the world to laugh at us.]
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To be sure, America is in dire need of vast investments in infrastructure. The country suffers from overflowing sewage drains, crumbling bridges, rusting railroad tracks, outworn roads, and public transportation systems rivaling those of third-world nations.
The American Society of Civil Engineers, giving America’s overall infrastructure a grade of D-plus, says we would need to spend $3.6tn by 2020 to bring it up to par.
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Worse, its underlying principle is deeply flawed. It boils down to a giant public subsidy to developers and investors, who would receive generous tax credits in return for taking on the job.
Which means the rest of us would have to pay higher taxes or get fewer services in order to make up for the taxes the developers and investors would no longer pay.
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The public would also pay a second time. The developers would own the roads and bridges and other pieces of infrastructure they finance. They’d then charge members of the public tolls and fees to use them.
In place of public roads and bridges, we’d have private roads and bridges. Think of America turning into giant, horizontal-like Trump Tower wherever you looked.
These tolls and fees won’t be cheap. They’d have to be set high in order to satisfy the profit margins demanded by the developers and the investors who back them.
Worst of all, we’d get the wrong kind of infrastructure. Projects that will be most attractive to developers and investors are those whose tolls and fees bring in the biggest bucks – giant mega-projects like major new throughways and new bridges.
Developers and investors won’t be interested in the thousands of smaller bridges, airports, pipes, and water treatment facilities across the country that are most in need of repair.
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They won’t be attracted to the highest priority for our infrastructure: better maintenance of what we already have. With improved maintenance, it wouldn’t be necessary to completely rebuild.
But investors and developers want to build anew. They can’t reap big rewards from maintenance.
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