A Toll Plaza from infrastructureinvestor.com

Yard Sale: How to Decrease the National Debt

Earlier this week I wrote about reducing the $31 trillion national debt with austerity. The reality is reducing the national debt is hard, maybe impossible, and just reducing spending or increasing taxes will not be enough. Today, I’d like to talk about another option: selling assets.

Most of the time when governments sell things, the people in charge of selling…sell them to their friends below market value. Sometimes those friends even rent them back to the US or the taxpayers for an excessive fee. Think of a tollway that gets sold, the fares get raised, and then twenty years later the government agrees to pay for repairs because the roads are in such bad shape because the new owners pocketed the money rather than maintaining the roads. Man, that is an ugly scenario…but it happens a lot.

So what could the government sell to reduce our debt?

1. Real estate: The government owns a large amount of land and buildings, including military bases, federal courthouses, and national parks. These properties could potentially be sold to private buyers or development firms.
2. Publicly-owned corporations: The government owns a number of publicly-traded corporations, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates hydroelectric power plants, and the Postal Service. These corporations could be privatized…