My personal opinion about this is that privatization replaced investment in infrastructure. When the companies and congresscritters realized they had all this p

My personal opinion about this is that privatization replaced investment in infrastructure. When the companies and congresscritters realized they had all this post-New Deal infrastructure being owned run and operated by the government, they started doing their normal shadyness and tossing kickbacks to their good ol boys, and voila, horribly crippled infrastructure because some rich people wanted even more money. Of course the excuse is always some variation of "government can't run anything right", "this service costs too much to operate", and "if we sell these assets thats revenue for us!", while ignoring all the nuance and interdependency that factors into infrastructure. The end result for citizens is lesser quality service at a higher price, almost every time. This is where corruption leads. Both parties are owned by K-street.