This is much more complicated an issue than Krugman paints.
You may recall that Trump had painted himself as a champion of condemnors and of condemnation for public purposes, as against the ultra right's, his own party's constituents', antagonism for the government being allowed to ever take any private property for any purpose whatsoever.
Does anyone besides me recall that?
What would that, his position, have meant to someone in that narrow and recherche field of human endeavor, condemnation, eminent domain?
It would have meant that he was on the side of government in its role as public infrastructure development champion, using government to do the job that the right wing private sector abhorred and had shunned. Trump was viewed as an apostate.
Now Trump wants to give that field entirely to the private sector directly, without the controlling involvement of government at all. Why, do you think, is he now advocating infrastructure projects in this format? Take a guess.
There are, to be sure, many constitutional issues with trying to give away government infrastucture work entirely to private developers wholesale, but Trump has not thought of those, and the average American neither knows nor cares about the fine points of law involved.
You may recall that Trump had painted himself as a champion of condemnors and of condemnation for public purposes, as against the ultra right's, his own party's constituents', antagonism for the government being allowed to ever take any private property for any purpose whatsoever.
Does anyone besides me recall that?
What would that, his position, have meant to someone in that narrow and recherche field of human endeavor, condemnation, eminent domain?
It would have meant that he was on the side of government in its role as public infrastructure development champion, using government to do the job that the right wing private sector abhorred and had shunned. Trump was viewed as an apostate.
There are, to be sure, many constitutional issues with trying to give away government infrastucture work entirely to private developers wholesale, but Trump has not thought of those, and the average American neither knows nor cares about the fine points of law involved.
One of the underlying problems, to which Krugman fails to advert, one very near to the hearts of all investors, great or small, but always uppermost on the minds of the better ones, is the perennial problem of uncertainty. Cf. Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild
The other underlying problem, related to the problem of uncertainty itself, is one which economists like Krugman, and also more conservative ones than him, have created for us all, in concert: the problem of even having or wanting a bigger, or god forbid a better, central government, capable of larger, longer term, infrastructure projects at all, not determined or called for by market forces in the first instance.
Our political system itself, with its potential for radical change every four years or so, tells against long term commitments, of any kind really, by any particular 4 year regime, however either effective or incompetent.
The fact that Trump had talked of dismantling ACA, among others, only adds to the inherent institutional uncertainty of such a system of governance, in the minds of greedy, or careful, or cautious, or timid investors.
You may have noted that he talks about a toll road, in either scenario, meaning that it it kind of double taxation, and frankly a bad weak idea in itself, if government funded; and guaranteed, high private profit, if privately funded.
Either alternative shows the kind of Morton's Fork Americans are now in with their political and financial system.
You will note that he doesn't drag out either the hidebound Republican bogey of picking winners, gov cannot do anything right; or the alternative Democratic bogey that the private sector cannot do anything that is not corrupt, things like that.
Contrary to what he says, it is about taxpayer rip, off either way, either by the government directly through double taxation, tax and tolls; or by government in cahoots with the private sector with guaranteed tax breaks and toll profits.
For sewers, restoration projects, etc., to which he refers, as a supposedly better alternative to Trump's plan, double and ongoing taxation would be built into rent in perpetuity as he says, meaning user fees and charges, on a monthly basis, just like a toll, public or private....
You pay the tax that funds road construction, then you continue to pay through tolls.
I fail to see any real difference in either infrastructure alternative, Trump's or Krugman's, either way.
You do the math.
In answer to his question how much thus financed wouldn't have taken place anyway, my answer, in this political environment, long bequethed by both parties, is, frankly, not much, if any.
Re additionality, with so called public projects, but often really PPPs, you normally have foreign private contractors, not American firms, winning the lion's share of public infrastructure projects now anyway, for a variety of reasons.
This is a whole complex area, because of our political system such as it is, in which Krugman's discussion, of merely federal versus versus provate, scratches not the surface, and I that doubt Trump's does either.
Why? Because it is too complicated corrupt and backward to face the light of day, to face, call it, the hot breath of ' close scrutiny '.
So you get someone like Krugman, letting you eagerly lick his partisan surface icing off the very outmost surface of the real issues he claims to address.
Florida's first such PPP road project, for example, I believe it was federally funded, and went to a German company, as I recall.
Either way, we are in an evil, dark, economists' world, largely left out of Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
You may have noted that he talks about a toll road, in either scenario, meaning that it it kind of double taxation, and frankly a bad weak idea in itself, if government funded; and guaranteed, high private profit, if privately funded.
Either alternative shows the kind of Morton's Fork Americans are now in with their political and financial system.
You will note that he doesn't drag out either the hidebound Republican bogey of picking winners, gov cannot do anything right; or the alternative Democratic bogey that the private sector cannot do anything that is not corrupt, things like that.
Contrary to what he says, it is about taxpayer rip, off either way, either by the government directly through double taxation, tax and tolls; or by government in cahoots with the private sector with guaranteed tax breaks and toll profits.
For sewers, restoration projects, etc., to which he refers, as a supposedly better alternative to Trump's plan, double and ongoing taxation would be built into rent in perpetuity as he says, meaning user fees and charges, on a monthly basis, just like a toll, public or private....
You pay the tax that funds road construction, then you continue to pay through tolls.
I fail to see any real difference in either infrastructure alternative, Trump's or Krugman's, either way.
You do the math.
In answer to his question how much thus financed wouldn't have taken place anyway, my answer, in this political environment, long bequethed by both parties, is, frankly, not much, if any.
Re additionality, with so called public projects, but often really PPPs, you normally have foreign private contractors, not American firms, winning the lion's share of public infrastructure projects now anyway, for a variety of reasons.
This is a whole complex area, because of our political system such as it is, in which Krugman's discussion, of merely federal versus versus provate, scratches not the surface, and I that doubt Trump's does either.
Why? Because it is too complicated corrupt and backward to face the light of day, to face, call it, the hot breath of ' close scrutiny '.
So you get someone like Krugman, letting you eagerly lick his partisan surface icing off the very outmost surface of the real issues he claims to address.
Florida's first such PPP road project, for example, I believe it was federally funded, and went to a German company, as I recall.
Either way, we are in an evil, dark, economists' world, largely left out of Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
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