by

Michael Hudson: Privatizing US Infrastructure Will Increase the Cost of Living

Fascism is not an economic policy

Image by Peg Hunter via Flickr

with Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Michael Hudson
February 13, 2018

TheRealNews on Feb 12, 2018

Trump’s infrastructure privatization plan is a hat trick that optimistically turns $200 billion into $1.5 trillion, is designed to eliminate the public sector and to bankrupt cities and states, says economist Michael Hudson.

“SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Michael, this is your opportunity to lay out a infrastructure plan that you think will work for this country.

“MICHAEL HUDSON: The government would finance it, and it would finance it by creating its own credit in the same way that it created the 4.6 trillion to bailout the banks on Wall Street. Instead of creating money to give to Wall Street, you’d spend money into the economy to build up the infrastructure. And ideally, you’d tax the rich for this, but now that Trump has untaxed the wealthy, the only way that you could possibly do it under his tax giveaway to Wall Street is for the government simply to print the money, create the money as the Federal Reserve or the Treasure can easily do, and finance it all public, and provide the basic infrastructure services at cost or freely. So, instead of tripling the cost of water, instead of tripling the cost of transportation, you’d actually reduce the cost of transportation, you’d reduce the cost of water, and you’d still get the value recapture tax but at least, the whole idea is you’d make it less expensive for the economy to produce and to live.”

via Transcript

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of J is for Junk Economics (2017), Killing the Host (2015), The Bubble and Beyond (2012), Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt: A History of Theories of Polarization v. Convergence in the World Economy (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971), amongst many others. He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com.

From the archives:

Chris Hedges: Race and Class Inequality in Major Cities

Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown: Avoiding The Road To Serfdom

Henry Wallace + Undoing The New Deal

If China Can Fund Infrastructure With Its Own Credit, So Can We by Ellen Brown

Corporate Plunder–The Bait and Switch of Public-Private Partnerships by Pete Dolack

Michael Hudson: Trump’s Infrastructure Plan, and The Idea of Proximity to Russia is All Fake