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"Why should we look for a concessionaire if we can do it ourselves?" he said. "The attraction of immediate money requires a return on investment to the concessionaire, whereas in government we're not looking to make a profit."

Exactly!

Those who misrepresent for-profit tollways as being the same as projects that pay off their own cost and then are made freeways exhibit either economic ignorance or willful misrepresentation of the facts.

They misrepresent COST and PRICE as being one and the same -- and they are definitely not so.

COST = (Material + Labor + Overhead)

PRICE = COST plus PROFIT

...and it is that additional (huge, unconstrained, operating) PROFIT (which will be shipped overseas) that makes the TTC a huge financial ripoff for all of Texas.

It's the same as the difference in mowing your own yard or paying some landscaping firm big bucks to do it for you.

If you want to be lazy and spend your own money, that's your business. Just don't claim that the two methods are financially equal. And don't try to pass your lazy, spendthrift accounting off on the rest of us and tell us it is a good deal.