Todd Suomela
Behind all the genteel business-speak, allow me to offer a plain-speak translation of what the New York Times business section declared today:
“Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up and sell off your public infrastructure treasures financed by generations of previous taxpayers! Give them to Wall Street – whom you just bailed out at discount prices – and let them earn fantastic, guaranteed rates of return for decades to come while cutting amenities and ignoring evolving public needs. You poor schlumpy taxpayers can continue to shoulder the high-risk, long-term investments. And if any of those public assets begin to look attractive – say, the Internet, wifi spectrum or federally financed drug research — why, we’ll be sure to swoop down and be the first take them away from you. After all, we have more money and better access to your elected leaders than you do!”
The New York Times is a great institution, but can we please shed the “liberal” moniker that is so often attached to it? A precious commons is threatened by enclosure, and all we hear is cheering.
commons infrastructure government politics business-as-usual
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