Thank you for clearing up my misunderstanding.
I don’t know the answer to your question. I bothers me to hear people say “buy American,” without qualifying it, and I guess you didn’t to that. CCC did.
I would be really happy to buy American, but sometimes, doing so isn’t what’s best for the USA. Sometimes, supporting American companies sends the message that they can get our business because of patriotism and xenophobia, instead of earning our business by being competitive. American businesses need to earn our business. If it is a gift, they will take it for granted, as we have seen from Detroit’s big three.
For those who have the extra income to buy only union-made American goods, good for you. Personally, I can’t take a hit in my standard of living right now. I have to make every penny count.
Ethal, you’re right. The US has got to catch up to the 21st century.
CCC, this is a case where I almost agree with you because I agree with Karl 100%.
In the northeast U.S. (which is what Karl is specifically addressing), there is plenty of demand to support high speed rail, and I have no objection to it being installed where there is obvious demand already. In fact, the economy in that area of the country has the capacity to pay for high speed rail on its own, without making taxpayers in North Dakota subsidize their mass transit.
I am with you and President Obama on ending oil company subsidies, but until we have a balanced budget, and the deficit is paid down, the US government should cut up its credit cards. When you are up to your eyeballs in debt (and we are), buying more stuff on your credit card isn’t going to solve your problems.
Tex and Mike, I have already tried to show the poor reasoning of this thinking. Briefly, it’s absurd to try to argue against high speed rail on the grounds of terrorism/safety,
Re-read your posts…you’re the one who was arguing for RR because it was safer…
I guess you forgot this…
I believe the president was referring to the fact that a train cannot be knocked out of the sky like a plane can, and that’s why we pat down plane passengers but not train passengers
Indeed!
The last thing you would ever want to do is plan ahead.
ethaldred, is your argument really that we need to do it just because China is doing it?
That reasoning never worked with my parents. If I were to say, “but all my friends’ parents are letting them do it!” they would laugh, and say something like “If all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you do it too?” If I said, “but Brian’s parents are letting him do it!” they would answer, “Well, we are not Brian’s parents. We are your parents.”
If I had been alive in the 1950s and 1960s, I would probably have believed participating in the space race was a good idea. With a modern eye, though, all the money we spent to be first to the moon seems pretty silly.
Honestly, if “But China is doing it!” is the best argument you can make, you must be less than 13 years old. Please see if you can come up with a better reason.
White, so according to you America shouldn’t have had a space program. That pretty much tells us all we need to know.
We’re seeing this lack of imagination, this shrinking of horizons, this defeatist attitude more and more in the US lately. Another example was the people who said New Orleans wasn’t worth saving “because it’s below sea level”, as if America in the 21st century can’t handle an engineering project that Holland mastered in the 13th century. It seems like many Americans are throwing in the towel and have no broader horizons than settling for basic necessities. That’s sad. But fortunately the majority of us haven’t given up on America and never will.
Please tell us, what major advances await the country with HSR technology? How will it advance the country as a whole?
That’s right. I believe as long as there are Americans starving, unemployed, and and without healthcare, spending money on exploring space is an immoral misdirection of resources.
This is not a lack of imagination or a defeatist attitude. It is a sign of a developed moral character.
I know you like to change the subject, but I think New Orleans is worth saving. It is a valuable part of American culture. It’s also a lot of people’s home. Nice try though.
Since a picture is worth 1,000 words…
We’re having this discussion, based on the “benefits” of high-speed rail, and we haven’t even established that HSR saves energy, on a per-passenger basis, relative to auto travel.
So, some questions: (to C^3, since he is the OP, was well as the chief proponent):
- What is Amtrack’s gross energy expenditure (most recent FY–both electric and diesel)?
1a. What does that represent in “petroleum energy equivalents?” - What was Amtrack’s total “revenue passenger miles” (how many PAYING passengers traveling how many miles?)
- What is 2/1a? (Being “revenue passenger miles per gallon?”)
- How does that compare to auto MPG(passenger) (remembering that not all auto travel consists of just one passenger).
If the number in “3” isn’t appreciably bigger than “4,” then it’s all a pipe dream…
We paid high prices in 1974, when oil was going to run out in 2 years. Remember?
Taxes and investors drive up the cost of oil.
People in Venezuela pay .25 cents per gallon of gas.
We shut down our refineries. Big mistake . We cut back on oil drilling. Big mistake. If we get into another world war, we are toast.
Americans do not support public transportation. Period. Its not up to the taxpayer to support money losing ideas.
What I LOVED about that “Buy American” slogan some 30 years ago…Was when Lee Iacocca (then head of Chryco) was using the slogan “Buy American”…Yet at the same time Chryco was installing Japanese and Korean robotics in their manufacturing plants.
The slogan should have been changed to…
“Buy American…somebody has to because we’re NOT.”
Bingo!
We just don’t have the money to build these things. While i agree that it would be awesome to have a high speed rail system, how are we going to pay for it? I feel like everyone agrees that our debt is unsustainable and unacceptable, so why would we chose to add to it?
Do we Americans not have the foresight or the self control not to do something that will obviously hurt us in the long run? Yes it would be great to have, but I just don’t think we have the resources at the moment to even begin construction.
Frankly, I think the ideal application of high-speed rail would be as a replacement for regional air travel.
Currently, most “hub airports” are near capacity on good-weather days (and way over on bad-weather days), and building new airport capacity is difficult–no-one wants them nearby.
Regional traffic, feeding the big hubs, takes roughly the same amount of runway capacity as the “big boys” but carries far fewer passengers. Replacing the turboprops with high-speed rail (direct to the airports) would be time-competitive while freeing up capacity. Then use existing air travel to go trans-nation.
(Of course, this still has the same “got no cash” problem…)
Alternatively they could require larger jets. Saw an article about the ‘commuter jet’ air traffic, a large number of small planes often connect two cities - replace that with half the number of, say, 737s. Fewer flight options, sure, but a simple way to save.
The biggest problem (there are others)is that lot of these small cities have airports with 5,000’ runways, concrete too thin to take much weight, etc. Sure that can all be overcome, but again you run into costs.
This is a big reason why–despite public fear of turbine engines driving propellers (turbines driving fans are okay)–turboprops have their niche.
Yes, for those cases there’s no substitute. I thing the article I saw was about major airports using lots of smaller planes. It might have used Charlotte-LaGuadia as an example. I know I’ve flown those Embraers from DFW to Cincinnati.
Thank you for telling us about your developed moral character and illustrating it with cartoons.
Examples of flawed reasoning are not “changing the subject”; they are rational discourse. You say as long as there are “Americans starving, unemployed” then American progress in other areas like the space program and the public transit infrastructure is “an immoral misdirection of resources”. Since there has always been unemployment and hunger in America, then in your view tons of progress in the USA must have been immoral. The postal service… Immoral? And in that case, how about federal and state freeway projects? Immoral, when people are starving and unemployed?
A full employment ideal (not a part of capitalist economies, by the way) is fortunately not something that would make most Americans abandon investment in the future.
[i]Please stop misquoting me and trying to change the subject![/i]
I said we should pay off our debt before we take on large expensive high speed rail projects. I also said we have no business investing in space exploration while there are Americans starving, unemployed, and and without healthcare. The two issues are quite different, and if you try, I bet you can see the differences, but based on your previous behavior, I doubt you will.
I never, NOT EVEN ONCE, used the phrase “American progress,” and I never talked about feeding the hungry as an obstacle to high speed rail. When it comes to high speed rail, I just want to stop spending on our credit card until the balance is paid off, while you want to keep spending on a credit card that is already maxed-out. I keep my fiscal house in order, and I wish our government would do the same. Why is that so hard for you to understand? Why must you cloud that issue with unrelated issues? Are you really that obtuse?
Just like New Orleans, until you mentioned it, I never said a thing, NOT EVEN ONCE, about federal and state freeway projects. Again, please stop trying to change the subject.
My positions aren’t really that hard to understand. Just stop trying to apply the same logic to things that aren’t the same, and concentrate on that one position, and you might be able to make sense of it. I have hope that you can end the logical fallacies and actually try to understand what is being written, but I am probably kidding myself and overestimating your capacity.
By the way, are you ever going to answer texases’ question? In case you missed it, here it is again:
Please tell us, what major advances await the country with HSR technology? How will it advance the country as a whole?