I live in a small town that has determined that it isn’t worthwhile to offer bus service. Certainly it would require subsidies from the tax payers. But as I watch the weather each day I see reports of the delays at airports and the congestion of the air lanes and the general nightmare that flying appears to have become in northeast. I have traveled on occasion to the D.C. area and have flown a few times from some of the busiest air ports and also traveled on the high speed rail system in Japan. I can’t imagine anyone opting to fly from Boston to New York or to D.C. if high speed rail were available. It would appear to be a quicker and less stressful trip. But, what do I know? If Jim Cantore shows up I’m in trouble, right.
You’re wrong in two respects. I’ve lived in and visited dozens of countries. I don’t have blinders on. I have direct knowledge of many, many cultures having lived among many, many societies. You’re wrong if you don’t think private property rights are highly relevant. Where will the tracks go? Where will the stations and switching yards go? Where will the electrical cables go? Where will the power plants to provide the electricity go? Where will the bridges and tunnels go? From whence will the tracks come? Who will build the trains? Who will build the ties? Where will those new factories be built? Who will provide the miles and miles of electrical cables. Where will the towers that support the cables stand? In your yard? Mine? Whitey’s? In China, high speed rail lines exist because the totalitarian government said so. Screw the property owner. Screw the environment. Screw the landscape. Screw habitat. Screw the labor force that has to build and maintain it. In Germany, if Deutsche Bahn wants to build a rail line through your yard, Deutsche Bahn builds a rail line through your yard. If you don’t see that as relevant, then it is you who are myopic.
And your businesses here in Germany are very highly regulated and taxed by the German government. If you think American bureaucracy is bad, try running a business here. If you want to open, say, a car dealership and didn’t score well enough in your high school aptitude tests, the German government won’t let you.
So, how’s BART doing? What’s BART you ask? Oh, that the Bay Area Rapid Transit. Annual operating expenses: $581,100. Annual revenue: $233,650.
Oh, but it will work THIS time.
But you did that very thing to me by accusing me of wearing blinders and calling my point wacky.
The Chinese are not applying normal economics to this project. The German company Kraus-Maffei invented the Magnetic Levitation system and built a demonstraton line. Some years later, the province of Ontario, Canada became interested and persuaded them to build a demo plant in Canada that would build the system locally. Queen’s University participated in the reseach.
Alas, nothing came of it; too much cost and grave uncertainties about performance in the snow belt around the Great lakes. The province ended up with traditional disel-powered double decker commuter trains, whcih are very successful and have a full ridership most of the time.
The Chinese are determined to make this sytem work, and export the technology to the rest fo the world. They don’t have to justify this expensse to their “voters”!
So, 50 years from now you made ride on a Chinese designed MagLev train to your favorate US city.
Cars cause cancer, you still haven’t explained how a bankrupt state is going to pay for this rail system. You still haven’t explained or proven that cars cause cancer.
Why is it that countries that don’t have our strict pollution regulations have less cancer deaths than the USA?
“The Chinese are not applying normal economics to this project.”
I agree. And with ridership 20% of capacity, they will not appear shrewd any time soon.
azimuth; you may be mising a few zeros ther. Expenses of $581.1 MILLION and revenues of $233.65 MILLION would make more sense.
The cities and region served have to add up the benefits of those riders in terms of expressways they did not need to build & opearate, less police and medical costs (fewer accidents), and so on.
I understand that when the Embarcadero expressway construction was halted 'way back, making it a bad ski jump ramp, that this was the turning point of no longer automatically catering to the automobile. Bart has considerable teething problems with its driverless design. It was a pioneering effort.
I have not been to the Bay area lately, but Bart should have alleviated the hopeless gridlock of the sixties and seventies.
Actually, C.C.C. did try to explain, I think. I think he suggested taxing people more than 50% of their gross income. Of course, he would probably exempt himself from this kind of profane tax rate. My best guess is that he is only willing to give half of other people’s money, but not his own:
…tax rates on the wealthy are ridiculous low, historically. And in fact higher tax rates on the wealthy in the past have usually corresponded with economic prosperity. Tax rates for the wealthiest were often well over 50% at points 20th century. These days, we have even more of the country’s monetary resources locked up in a miniscule sector of the population that enjoying incredibly low tax rates, and this is a main cause of our tax revenue problems. Top tax rates are 25% lower that the historical average. If we put the top tax rates up to levels that we have in the 1960’s or 1920’s, we would be able to get our country running again, pay down the debt, invest in our infrastructure, and stop the trend toward being a second rate nation.
C.C.C., the kind of income redistribution you seek can be found in other countries, like Cuba and North Korea. Here in the USA, we create social equality by removing barriers to upward mobility to create opportunities for those who are motivated and able. We don’t try to create social justice by fleecing the rich and playing Robin Hood.
Recent News Headline: [i]EPA issues warning on Dihydrogen Oxide[/i]
http://www.deadseriousnews.com/?p=144
Here is the story:
The Environmental Protection Agency, acting on the largest study of its kind ever, has issued an urgent warning on the dangers of Dihydrogen Oxide. The $4.5 billion study found that over 3,000 people die annually of Dihydrogen Oxide inhalation.
Even more alarming to EPA scientists was the extent to which Dihydrogen Oxide is found in the environment, including lakes, rivers, oceans, even in daycare centers and schools. While Dihydrogen Oxide occurs naturally in nature, [i]its also coming out of the tailpipes of our cars.[/i]
Can you believe it? 
Normally, societies that do best let the cream rise to the top. Having said that, we need some form of progressive taxation to have enough overall revenue to provide the services we expect. At this time a very large number of Americans middle and lower income earners (the same ones who whine about “taxing the rich”) do not pay any taxes at all because they have so many exemption that their “taxable” income in zero. Those same “poor” Americans would be called rich in most countries and would pay a hefty tax.
In Britain, before Margaret Thatcher became the leader, socialists wanted to “fleece the rich”. One economist sat down and took ALL the income from those rich, and calculated if it was all taxed away, the average Brit would be 13 Pounds richer, about $27!!!
It’s true that socialists don’t or won’t understand that in order to “distribute wealth”, you have to create it first!
I do believe taxes should be progressive, just not to an extreme level. I don’t think anyone should pay 50%, or even 30% of their gross income in in federal income taxes. I could live with a progressive tax structure similar to this:
ANNUAL INCOME________TAX
<$50,000_______________8%
$50,000-200,000_________9%
$200,000-400,000________10%
$400,000-600,000________11%
$600,000-800,000________12%
$800,000-1,000,000______13%
$1,000,000-2,000,000_____14%
$2,000,000____________15%
If the federal government can’t balance a budget without taxing anyone more than 15%, it has a spending problem. Similarly, if any American can’t afford to pay the above tax rates to the feds, that American has a spending problem.
I think the 8 billion would be better used to build/start the infrastructure for hydrogen fueling stations.
Honda’s FCX Clarity is a good start for a petrol alternative.
Well, there’s a big part of the problem - if CA miraculously had a windfall, would high speed trains be the place to spend the money? That’s CA, or our nation’s, top need? I think not. There’s always a decision to be made on the next best place to spend the money, and high speed rail would be WAY down the list. If the money was available, which it is not.
As for hydrogen, where will it come from? Why not just use electricity directly in EVs?
Till they replace fossil fuel power generation electric cars would be the worst place to spend money.And it seems one of the most efficient ways to produce hydrogen is using electricity.So I do not know.
Living in a rural area a fast train has no meaning to my life style.
Lots of energy lost changing electricity into hydrogen, shipping it, storing it, compressing it into cars, then just changing it back into electricity again to run the car (hydrogen cars are usually electric cars with fuel cells in addition to (not instead of) batteries.
Yes, it is a top need to rebuild the infrastructure of the USA and get us into the 21st century before the rest of the industrialized world leaves us in the dust (from car pollution).
Other posts have alluded to the fact that spending has basically been out of control at least during the last 2 administrations.
George Bush Jr. did what no head of state has ever done in the history of the world. He launched a ruinously expensive war (Iraq) and financed it with …TAX CUTS!!
If a country’s GDP is rising fast and productivity improves as well, deficits can be tolerated for a few years. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts capitalized on the vast productivity improvements due to computerization of virtually everything and other technological advances. This raised output quickly and the resulting tax revenue allowed the governmet books to be quite healthy. His out of country military adventures were cheap compared to wht the US is spending now.
CCC, you haven’t proven higher tax rates on the rich resulted in economic progress, or that tax cuts have resulted in economic downturns. Do you care to offer any proof of these hypotheses?
What causes economic growth, and what causes economic recessions, can’t be boiled down to a single cause. Our economy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If you think this one tool of fiscal policy is the keystone of economic performance at a national level, you know nothing about macroeconomics.
Even in a historical context, the causes of post WWII economic growth are debated by our finest economists, and none of them are so bold as to attribute it to a single cause.
If you think my direct quote of your post was a “dishonest summary,” that’s just too bad. They are your words.
First, I am in favor of rail investment. That being said I want to comment on something you stated.
". . . the Chinese…Who, by the way, now have over 4000 miles of high-speed rail in place, designed to run at 300 mph… "
I am a resident alien of P.R. China. As such, my experience is limited to Mainland China. However, I have traveled extensively inside of China.
There are not 4000 miles of 300mph rail. The only line that reaches that speed is the maglev line between Shanghai and Pudong airport, it runs at about 450kph (280mph) but is only about 40mi long. The other High speed rail, the D-trains in China top out at 250kph (155mph). The D-train is the system that has extensive lines through China as it travels in upgraded standard rail.
However, the D-train is not the common method of travel in China. It is too expensive for most travelers. Further, the trucks (wheel assemblies) of the D-train can not be overloaded, this makes standing room travel impractical. Foreigners use it extensively because it is cleaner (and, because there is no standing room travel, it is less crowded). Most travel is on traditional heavy rail that does not exceed 80kph (50mph).