Here is a cute part of the conservative agenda that could only have been dredged up from the depths of hell. First, their plan:

Trump just released his infrastructure plan. It’s loaded with giveaways to Wall Street, with plans to sell off roads, bridges, water systems, airports, trains – you name it – to corporate interests through public-private partnerships. And Trump is dead set on jamming this through Congress.

These public-private partnerships are corporate smash-and-grabs that will saddle us taxpayers with sky-high tolls just to get to work every day, and then gouge us at home with out-of-control utility bill. (Rootstrikers)

That second paragraph is not the whole story. Trump intends to sell these projects to the highest bidder. More likely than not, China will be at the front of the line to take possession of large chunks of our infrastructure in this colossal giveaway. For example, they will look at the income stream from tolls over the next 20 years, and reduce in to its present value. That calculation can be done on any business calculator. To wit:

Present Value = Future Value / (1 + discount rate)^n

Let’s say they believe they can collect $100 billion in future tolls. Using 4% as their discount rate, they believe this project is worth $45.6 billion. They offer $40 billion. And Trump takes it. Now China gets to collect all the tolls from the next 20 years. If this is a highway, you and I get to pay China for the privilege of driving over it. Since most drivers are low to middle income earners, it works exactly like a regressive tax, with you and me as the primary payees. How sweet is that?

But there is more. What happens to that $40 billion? Well, there are corporate costs and government costs, and bookkeeping costs, and payouts here, and payouts there until…voila!...maybe $5 billion is left to pay down the debt. Meanwhile, tolls can rise as fast and as high as the traffic will bear.

Multiply this scheme across a thousand projects, and in the immortal words of Sen. Dirksen, “soon we’re talking real money.” Not only that, when tolls begin to fall because we can’t afford to pay them, the great default sets in. It really doesn’t matter much whether we feel the pressure from corporations, the US government, or from foreign governments, you and I are the suckers who get the shaft. Our economy would fall into a Great Depression, our infrastructure would crumble from neglect, massive hunger and homelessness would become the new reality, and we would be more than the picture of hell--we would be it and it would be us.