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Showing posts from October, 2018

Making Highways and Airports Pay

In today's Wall Street Journal is an opinion piece entitled "How to Make Highways and Airports Pay" . I apologize about the WSJ paywall if you are not a subscriber, but the gist of the article is that federal and state localities should adopt a feature called Asset Recycling which allows the government to lease assets such as highways, bridges, tunnels and airports to private consortiums and they, in turn, charge consumers to use the asset. The government then takes the money it gets from the private businesses and invests that money into other meaningful projects. Problem #1 is that money which the government receives is virtually NEVER sequestered for use only as intended. Problem #2 is that while private concerns can usually get things done cheaper than government, there is that pesky problem of profit. The management company needs to show a profit for all of the out years and a 75 year lease can be a long run to fund. I think there is a place for privatization wit