It Makes No Sense..Follow

If the extent of infrastructure planned for high speed and light rail trains were designed solely to replace planes, you'd have a great point. It's not though. It's designed to replace cars and highways.



I honestly don't know, and don't really feel like looking it up, but since you said this, I assume that you know what percentage of the total cost of Air travel is subsidized by the government compared to say Amtrak, or any given municipal light rail system? Is it even remotely close?


On the assumption that it isn't (you're free to provide data otherwise if you can find it), then doesn't this mean that the government is "investing" in things which aren't profitable? I mean, if you could make money running a train system then private companies would be doing it a lot more often. You know, that whole "greed" and "profit" thing. So doesn't this mean that once again, we're being asked to put our tax dollars into things that will ultimately cost us more money down the line and not less?

Is that really an "investment"? Or is it getting us stuck paying for yet another big government program that we can't get rid of once people become dependent on it? You know. Like social security. Medicare. Numerous welfare systems. Publicly run education systems? I'm all for building things that will actually make financial sense in the long run. But that's not usually what the Dems do. They have a long history of creating programs designed to cost more than they create and to make people dependent on that cost differential. They pay for them by passing the cost onto those who don't benefit from those things, thus meeting their political agenda of equalizing economic outcomes and playing on class warfare to keep the whole thing going.

They don't want things that are cost effective over time. And their party history shows that they consistently create things which cost more than anticipated, and produce less than anticipated, but just happen to have the convenient side effect of turning the percentage of the population who do benefit from those things into loyal Democrat voters. That's what they are really investing our money in, and that's the return they really hope to gain. So it's not exactly surprising that a lot of people don't want to "invest" that way.

Yeah. It's a trap. One we've fallen into enough times in the past to see coming.

Edited, Jan 27th 2011 4:22pm by gbaji

To me, improving our educational system means breaking the public school system up and replacing it with completely privately owned schools funded with vouchers

Good idea. This has led to widespread fraud and has abjectly failed every single time it's been tried on any sort of scale. Fuck that, though, it sounds like a good idea because it will destroy teachers unions, and heaven knows the real problem with education in the US is the labor movement.

Sounds about right for ya :D

Agreed! Yay, Obama!!!

Agreed!! Yayyyyy!!!!

No. Light rail and subway systems across the country are mostly quasi-governmental organizations that support themselves. If an individual can make their daily commute via public transit it will almost always cost them less than daily driving.

Tax dollars are a bit of a wash aren't they?...It's either asphalt and concrete for roads and highways or tunnels and rails for high-speed trains and subways.

Time-savings and energy efficiency are on the side of light rail.




Edited, Jan 28th 2011 3:32pm by Elinda

Maybe, but at least one factor in the frequency and type of repaving, signage, cop coverage, etc, on any particular road is the amount of traffic it sees. Public transport should, if properly planned, reduce the use of roads. Most light-rail here, as well, is cheap and often subsidized on start-up. Though high-speed cross-country trains are private (ie Amtrak) and not so inexpensive.

Oh, I didn't know that. The Amtrak ride from Portland (ME) to Boston is expensive. The bus ride (concord trailways) is about half the cost yet runs on pretty much the same schedule.

You're just being picky with the 'that' comment. It was clear what I was asking. It's a moot point now that the transcript is out. I'd not listened to the whole speech but had heard Obama twice say "It makes no sense". I thought maybe it was some new catchphrase. Apparently those were the only two times though.

all I know is in sim city I always used rails, it was less pollution and made more people come to my city. (until those ******** wanted roads, then ******* about pollution, public doesn't know what they want the effing pricks.)

HAHA thats funny cuz after I wrote that and for the last few hours ive been playing sim city on my SNES and I have 2000 open right now on my comp. It is funny though that such a basic game can tell you so much. The general public doesn't really know what they want, its no wonder that politics are so ****** up because people are always changing their opinions on things. Silly people if only they knew how to say what they mean, and mean what they say.

I was thinking of digging out my SimCity Unlimited disk, haha.