Most airports of any size are funded to a great degree by the " govmint". They have to be or they would close. Many of these airports were built during WW2 and were totally funded and built by the "govmint". When one looks at the tax rate in the fiftys and sixtys compared to today, especially corporate and high income people , it's easy to see why there was much expansion and growth, space travel etc. also compare U.S. Aircraft production at that time up thru the 70s! Today it's almost nothing in comparison . Plus the middle class is now in a very tenuous situation due to automation and shipping millions of jobs overseas. ( they are the people that bought light aircraft back then. All gone.) using convicts in the roles described has gone on for years. Most in maryland are kept busy picking up the trash along side the highways that hicks throw out their car windows.
Broken record Jimmy. Nice cut and paste from the party lines again. How about some reality with that stuff?
Tax rate is meaningless without knowing how it relates to GDP. Taxation by GDP was over 100% at the end of WWII and fell steadily until 1974. After 1974 it has climbed back up to nearly half of GDP today.
Expansion and growth was a function of the overall economy after the baby boom, and because in ratio, government took less and less of the real dollars the boomers made, right up until the early seventies. Then it started to grow massively and eat everyone alive. Many want to be eaten, of course, because they directly or indirectly work for the beast; and those jobs are nearly impossible to be fired from or lose because they're unprofitable. In fact, the government now operates by borrowing $0.45 of every dollar it spends BEFORE the so-called "unfunded mandates". It's not paying roughly half of its bills from income revenue, even for the items it's decided it wants to spend on. And boy does it want to spend. Spend lots and lots of money it doesn't have.
Recall also there Jimbo, that a deficit is an annual measure or limited time measure. Debt isn't even included in the deficit spending number above. Debt is what the deficit accumulates. And it's growing without bounds too.
Anyway back to your points: Plenty of very large airports have been built since WWII. Many are quite profitable on paper without needing to have been paid for by government, and could easily be completely profitable without government. They'd just have to restructure how they charge airport users.
As far as shipping jobs overseas goes, you're right. It's shipping! It is simply a result of a quite successful aviation business if you think about it. Globalization can't happen if people and goods can't travel the globe inexpensively. For those big items, container shipping changed that world since WWII.
Expensive American labor simply isn't needed anymore, with access to cheap labor worldwide, and it's all thanks to the ultra efficient shipping industry and government building them airports and ports.
Cool how that works, eh? Unintended consequences. Success in one industry can kill others by opening markets previously inaccessible. And it did. In many.
Aircraft production after WWII through the 70s was propped up by one very specific thing. Cheap fuel.
Secondarily, it was propped up by two other things, the GI Bills of he past paying for flight training and the thing you most dislike: Tax breaks for the rich.
Owning an aircraft in the 70s and 80s could be structured as a lovely tax break. Especially one used for business purposes. Long gone are the credits for depreciation that allowed Cessna and Piper to sell thousands of units a year.
As far as convict labor goes: If the middle class is hurting so bad, the government allowing businesses or itself to use convicts to compete with the middle class, is technically more immoral today than it was in the past. Your assertion of the middle class going down is a reason to NOT do it, if you truly believe it.
Middle class can't find work? Probably shouldn't make them compete with prisoners for the menial manual labor stuff, really.
