> It's not just water where the UK has a problem with this. Transport for London has also been forced to underprice its services for years by London's socialist mayor

In the US we have a problem with fantastically underpricing public roads. We don't expect their books to break even, much less generate a profit. Meanwhile everyone asks why train systems are not profitable.

> The US is a very right wing country.

Yeah, at least compared with most of Europe.

> It's politicians are better able to avoid populist price controls.

You didn't notice when the current president (somewhat successfully) bullied retailers into swallowing tariff-caused price increases, so they wouldn't damage his popularity? That almost seems right-wing socialist.

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qcnguy 4 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think Trump is anyone's idea of a textbook conservative, especially not economically. He's a former democrat with populist instincts. Such politicians are often popular. It's frequently said in the UK that the median British voter is socially conservative and economically liberal.

It's true that the US subsidizes its road network. The effect is somewhat different though. If TfL doesn't get enough money in due to price controls then the network just degrades. If the US subsidizes its roads, the network can be maintained using subsidies. For it to be equivalent, roads would have to be privately owned but unable to charge the true cost of maintenance.

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swiftcoder 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The point is that the US doesn't subsidise rail, and yet they do exercise price controls on many forms of rail, so on both fronts rail is screwed when it comes to competing with road travel

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danans 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I don't think Trump is anyone's idea of a textbook conservative, especially not economically

I'm just going off what you said above:

> The US is a very right wing country. > It's politicians are better able to avoid populist price controls.

I don't think he is a traditional conservative either, but rather a right-wing nationalist ethno-socialist.

However, the fact is that he has the near unanimous support of most "textbook conservatives", both in Congress and in the broader Republican party, as evidenced by their voting for and supporting a massive debt-exploding budget and their silence in the face of his ethno-nationalist executive actions.

If he isn't a textbook conservative, neither are they.

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wredcoll 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm just piling on but:

> a textbook conservative, especially not economically

Wtf is a text book conservative supposed to be, exactly? And have we ever had one?

All the republicans in my life have raised the national debt and spent their time passing laws about culture war issues.

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Matticus_Rex 4 days ago | parent [-]

Conservatives have generally been at least somewhat pro-market. American Republicans haven't been fiscally responsible, but until Trump they were meaningfully more pro-market than the alternative. Trump's economic views have at least as much in common with Bernie Sanders (as Bernie keeps pointing out!) as with pre-Trump Republicans.

	▲	danans 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Trump's economic views have at least as much in common with Bernie Sanders (as Bernie keeps pointing out!) as with pre-Trump Republicans This is a myth that has the effect (intended or not) of normalizing Trump's economic policies with Bernie supporters. Bernie Sanders only says that Trump speaks politically about the same working class struggles that he speaks about. That's it. Bernie opposes 99% of Trump's actual economic policies, including the broad tariffs that are hitting the working class the hardest. The only other economic policy Trump has done is tax cuts for the wealthy and cutting social safety net programs. Those are in direct conflict with everything Bernie stands for, but they are wholly supported by nearly all pre-Trump Republicans. If you have any doubts about that, just review the vote tally from the big beautiful bill.

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qcnguy 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Trump has certainly dragged his party towards the left economically speaking. With lots of squealing and resistance, but they went there in the end because it's popular with voters. They haven't managed to win people over on fiscal conservatism despite trying.

But US politics plays out in many ways, including at the local level. For water supply who the POTUS is doesn't matter that much, it's not handled at the federal level. American political outcomes vs the rest of world are the result of long term social trends beyond any one man.

	▲	danans 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Trump has certainly dragged his party towards the left economically speaking Only rhetorically, but that's just fodder for his blue collar base. In practice he's done the opposite. His massive tax cuts for the wealthy and gutting of the social safety net is Reaganism/Thatcherism at its most explicit, and his broad tariffs are a tax on people who spend most of their income in survival.