原文已被隐藏，你可用 快捷键 - 或点击 显示原文 按钮来查看原文
第一段
1 .Listen to part of a lecture in a United States Government class.
该句暂无译文！
第二段
1 .We've been talking about the basic services and facilities that an economy needs to function,
该句暂无译文！
2 .roads, bridges, rail systems, water supplies, power grids, and so forth.
该句暂无译文！
3 .What we call infrastructure.
该句暂无译文！
第三段
1 .Now, traditionally much of a society's infrastructure, particularly the transportation infrastructure,
该句暂无译文！
2 .has been owned and operated by states, by governments.
该句暂无译文！
3 .But lately, local and state governments have started to consider and sometimes actually enter into various deals to privatize parts of their infrastructure, particularly in the transportation sector.
该句暂无译文！
第四段
1 .And why is this privatization happening?
该句暂无译文！
第五段
1 .Well, as you may know, in the 1950s and 60s there was a tremendous highway building boom.
该句暂无译文！
2 .Governments created a huge interlocking network of highways with associated bridges and tunnels.
该句暂无译文！
3 .But these facilities are getting old now and they're becoming more and more expensive to maintain,
该句暂无译文！
4 .very expensive actually.
该句暂无译文！
5 .Tolls and tax revenues don't often cover all the needed repairs.
该句暂无译文！
第六段
1 .So why don't the governments just raise tolls and taxes?
该句暂无译文！
第七段
1 .Well, that's not so simple.
该句暂无译文！
2 .Government officials are elected by voters and voters get upset when their taxes go up.
该句暂无译文！
3 .And as for highways tolls,
该句暂无译文！
4 .commuters especially don't like paying higher tolls,
该句暂无译文！
5 .merely proposing increases can damage political careers.
该句暂无译文！
第八段
1 .So there's tremendous pressure on governments to find other ways to maintain infrastructure assets.
该句暂无译文！
2 .One solution is to sell or lease a part of the infrastructure,
该句暂无译文！
3 .a toll bridge, a tunnel, something like that to a private company,
该句暂无译文！
4 .usually a company that specializes in this sort of thing.
该句暂无译文！
5 .The idea is that the company that buys or leases a bridge or a highway or whatever will find it easier to keep it in good repair.
该句暂无译文！
第九段
1 .That will make commuters happy.
该句暂无译文！
第十段
1 .Right, there could be better service.
该句暂无译文！
2 .Since they are not government entities,
该句暂无译文！
3 .private companies face less political resistance, say to raising tolls in order to provide that better service.
该句暂无译文！
4 .But besides that, there's another reason governments like these deals.
该句暂无译文！
5 .States often have trouble paying their bills and they can use money they get from selling or leasing a piece of infrastructure to balance their budgets.
该句暂无译文！
第十一段
1 .That all sounds good to me.
该句暂无译文！
第十二段
1 .It does sound good,
该句暂无译文！
2 .but a lot of people are very wary of privatizing pieces of infrastructure and rightly so.
该句暂无译文！
3 .For instance, in almost every case thus far,
该句暂无译文！
4 .the first thing private companies do is drastically raise user fees because they say,
该句暂无译文！
5 ."Oh, we must do critical maintenance that's gone undone for years and years.
该句暂无译文！
6 .And because we're a private company,
该句暂无译文！
7 .we can't use tax money to do it.
该句暂无译文！
8 .Our only option is raising tolls.
该句暂无译文！
第十三段
1 .But what's the impact on people who use a toll road to get to work?
该句暂无译文！
2 .What if a private owner doubles or triples the toll overnight?
该句暂无译文！
第十四段
1 .Uh, users would have to spend a higher percentage of their income on commuting.
该句暂无译文！
第十五段
1 .And depending on their income, that percentage could be significant.
该句暂无译文！
第十六段
1 .But if tolls went up, me, I'd just avoid the toll road and take smaller back roads where there aren't any tolls.
该句暂无译文！
第十七段
1 .That's a good point.
该句暂无译文！
2 .Secondary roads would become attractive to lots of other people too,
该句暂无译文！
3 .and private companies know this.
该句暂无译文！
4 .They also know that dramatic reductions in traffic would hurt their bottom line.
该句暂无译文！
5 .So market forces do play a role in keeping private companies from raising their tolls too much.
该句暂无译文！
6 .But the mere prospect of astronomical toll hikes is still alarming to governments when they think about selling or leasing parts of an infrastructure.
该句暂无译文！
第十八段
1 .Now, from a business standpoint,
该句暂无译文！
2 .infrastructure purchases can be great investments!
该句暂无译文！
3 .If a company buys or gets a long-term lease on a toll bridge from the government,
该句暂无译文！
4 .it's got an almost guaranteed steady source of revenue for years and years,
该句暂无译文！
5 .which means that if the company decides it wants to sell the bridge to another company, say ten years from now,
该句暂无译文！
6 .it'll have no problem finding a buyer.
该句暂无译文！
第一十九段
1 .But what if that buyer, this new owner, continues to charge a high toll but doesn't do the same amount of maintenance because they want to squeeze more money out of the asset!
该句暂无译文！
第二十段
1 .In that case, could the governments buy the asset back?
该句暂无译文！
2 .Well, to do that, it would have to raise money either by raising taxes or by selling bonds, both of which are politically sensitive.
该句暂无译文！
第二十一段
1 .So it's unclear in a practical sense whether these deals are truly reversible.
该句暂无译文！