Who Will Pay for the Roads?

Published: April 19, 2016, 7:06 p.m.

Who will pay for the roads is perhaps a better question than "Who will build the roads?" since it is the financing, not the actual construction that causes the most amount of anger and division in political discourse today. Over the past several years we've seen large corporations make large investments to purchase naming rights to ballparks and arenas in an effort to expand their brand. Here in Kansas City, we have the Sprint Center, and the old Sandstone Amphitheater is now the Providence Medical Center Amphitheater. No doubt this has caused some citizens to lament the corporate takeover of some old and well-known landmarks, but the truth is, some of these places still exist BECAUSE of these companies. So, what if we did the same thing with our roads? In Missouri alone the cost to maintain public roads is about 2.2 billion a year. It's estimated that Missouri drivers spend and additional 4.5 billion a year in maintenance on their vehicles due to substandard streets and highways. What if we sold off sections of highways to corporations? What if you could shoot across town on the Hilton Highway or the Overstock.com overpass? What if companies were willing to accept some if not all of the costs currently paid by taxpayers in exchange for naming rights to our roads? It's an interesting idea. For there we're going to move to healthcare. UnitedHealth has announced it's pulling out of most of the ACA exchanges due to the estimated billion dollar loss they will have to cover. The system was never going to work. I would argue it was destined to fail from the beginning. But that's not going to stop Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders from touting it as a success and arguing for more of the same. It's sad and the truth needs to be exposed.Support the show.