Letter: President Trump is privatizing our nation

Government expenditures benefit everyone. For example, the U.S. Economic Development Administration alone invests billions in water and wastewater systems, transportation infrastructure, telecommunication infrastructure, workforce training centers, business incubators, intermodal facilities, science and research parks and technology-based facilities. This creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, generating billions in private investment. A win-win for everyone. President Trump would purge these programs. Jobs? Gone. Money for local economies? Vanished. Infrastructure upgrades? Terminated.

Project 2025 reveals Trump’s scheme to have private, for-profit corporations manipulate America’s infrastructure for their gain. The English Tories privatized water services causing raw human feces to pollute every waterway. Will Trump’s privatization legacy also be putrid water? Another outcome of Trump’s privatization plot: Supply chain price increases will explode everyone’s cost-of-living. So much for the man who says he’ll save the economy. When our cost-of-living climbs, Trump will have high-priced egg on his face.

The history of privatization shows that corporations place profits over people, that hurt competition means higher prices and that reduced health care increases sickness. Essential services, like sewage, water and road repair, become unaffordable for many. Assistance to the poor get cut, and more people get sick and die. There’s dangerous prison crowding. The cost of electricity balloons as we sit in the dark. Many are excluded from a robust education, and only elites get ahead.

Picture your street privatized with tollbooths everywhere. Your daily choice: pay or stay. Sorry, privatized sidewalks mean no free walking. Challenge Trump’s privatization lust.

John Atherton

Dover