The Cost of “Small Government”
How Deregulation and Privatization Fail American Communities
For decades, “small government” has been a rallying cry of American conservatives. Donald Trump’s second-term agenda promises even deeper cuts to government services, more privatization of public goods, and looser regulations in the name of “freedom” and “efficiency.”
But real-world experiments with these ideas—from Kansas to Texas to the United Kingdom—tell a very different story.
Instead of prosperity, they have delivered crumbling infrastructure, weakened public services, higher costs for consumers, and growing inequality.
Trump’s plans to double down on deregulation and privatization will not make America stronger. They will leave ordinary Americans—especially his own supporters—more vulnerable and less secure.
Kansas: The Tax Cut Catastrophe
In 2012, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback launched what he called a “real live experiment” in conservative economics: massive income tax cuts, including eliminating taxes on many businesses.
The promised outcome? Explosive job growth and a booming economy.
The reality?
State revenues collapsed by 22%.
Public services were slashed. Schools cut programs and shortened their weeks to four days.
The state’s bond rating was downgraded, increasing borrowing costs.
Job growth lagged behind neighboring states that kept taxes higher.
After five years of mounting deficits and public outrage, a bipartisan coalition finally reversed most of the tax cuts to save the state from financial ruin.
Kansas showed that radical tax cuts and shrinking government don’t unleash prosperity—they cripple essential services and hurt working families the most.
Texas: Deregulation and Disaster
Texas has long prided itself on a low-regulation, pro-market model. But the February 2021 winter storm exposed the dangerous limits of that ideology.
The state’s heavily deregulated and isolated electricity grid collapsed under freezing temperatures, leaving millions without power for days.
Investigations revealed that Texas had repeatedly ignored calls to weatherize its energy infrastructure, trusting that market forces would provide resilience. They didn’t.
The cost of deregulation:
Hundreds of lives lost.
Tens of billions in economic damages.
Skyrocketing electric bills for some customers who faced variable “market rates.”
Freedom from regulation didn’t deliver better service. It delivered a deadly blackout—and made it painfully clear that basic public infrastructure needs public accountability.
The UK’s Austerity Disaster
Across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom embarked on a similar path during the 2010s: cutting public services in the name of fiscal responsibility.
The result was a decade of stagnation:
Public health outcomes worsened. A study linked over 130,000 “preventable” deaths to austerity.
Local governments went bankrupt.
Public transportation deteriorated, and housing shortages worsened.
Economic growth slowed, leaving Britain worse off than major peers.
Instead of shrinking debt, austerity policies exacerbated social and economic inequality—and arguably left the country more fragile in the face of crises like COVID-19.
The lesson: you cannot cut your way to prosperity, especially by hollowing out the very systems people rely on every day.
What Privatization Really Means
When politicians talk about “shrinking government,” what they often mean is shifting essential services into private, for-profit hands:
Public schools replaced with voucher-funded private academies.
Public water systems privatized and then poorly maintained.
Public health agencies defunded, leaving gaps that for-profit hospitals don’t fill.
Privatization doesn’t eliminate costs. It often increases them, adding layers of profit-seeking middlemen between taxpayers and the services they need.
And crucially: private companies are not accountable to voters. When things go wrong, there’s no election to fix it.
The Dangerous Road Ahead
If Trump’s second term follows the same playbook—tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of critical industries, privatization of public services—the result will be predictable:
Higher inequality.
More fragile infrastructure.
Greater costs for working families.
This isn’t theory. It’s recent history.
True national strength doesn’t come from gutting the public sector. It comes from investing in it—building systems that serve everyone, not just the wealthy few.
Trump’s vision of “freedom” is a freedom for corporations and billionaires. For everyone else, it’s the freedom to fend for yourself.
Up Next
Broken public systems lead to even bigger risks.
Next, we’ll expose how environmental rollbacks and energy failures are leaving Americans dangerously vulnerable.