High Speed Rail (Boston to... Texas?)

porter said:
Its a great idea and will hopefully reduce car and plane use. I've ridden high-speed rail in Europe and it really was a delight to be able to get from place to place so quickly, comfortably, and safely. But...why devote a lot of resources to something that isn't really needed (as in we have cars and planes and regular trains) at a time when our deficit is enormous? Why not wait until that issue is fixed and we start getting some 90s-style tax surpluses again to build this?

That argument aside, its a pretty cool prospect connecting Boston to NY and DC, being able to go to those places for a weekend or something for much less than the cost of a plane ticket.
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The reason for deficit spending, especially at the tail end of a recession and especially on giant public works projects, is to spur the economy and help produce jobs. And cars and planes and "regular trains" are unable to absorb current demand.

This is a two-fold opportunity to help heal today's economy and build tomorrow's infrastructure.

There is a loud segment of the population who are willfully ignorant of this though. They'd rather stand with their fingers in their ears screaming about birth certificates and tax breaks for the 400 richest people in the country.

Don't pay attention to them. They suck.
 
"The reason for deficit spending, especially at the tail end of a recession and especially on giant public works projects, is to spur the economy and help produce jobs. And cars and planes and "regular trains" are unable to absorb current demand."

No and historically this has been repeatedly been proven to be a fallacy.

"This is a two-fold opportunity to help heal today's economy and build tomorrow's infrastructure. "

No, the debt service alone is going to make things worse and infrastructure which requires a perpetual government subsidy is never going to contribute anything to the economy except debt.

"There is a loud segment of the population who are willfully ignorant of this though. They'd rather stand with their fingers in their ears screaming about birth certificates and tax breaks for the 400 richest people in the country. "

You're pretty ignorant about economics and history. I'm more worried about a man that seems to hide everything about his past when all past presidents have pretty much had every little detail and piece of paper in their life scrutinized in the past two decades. Taxes are for the little people, that's why most of the administration's members, friends, and close associates like General Electric, don't pay them.
 
bbfen said:
The reason for deficit spending, especially at the tail end of a recession and especially on giant public works projects, is to spur the economy and help produce jobs. And cars and planes and "regular trains" are unable to absorb current demand.

This is a two-fold opportunity to help heal today's economy and build tomorrow's infrastructure.

There is a loud segment of the population who are willfully ignorant of this though. They'd rather stand with their fingers in their ears screaming about birth certificates and tax breaks for the 400 richest people in the country.

Don't pay attention to them. They suck.
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Thread explosion in 3... 2...

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html
 
Lurker said:
No and historically this has been repeatedly been proven to be a fallacy.
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Now I wouldn't say it will be entirely incorrect. It really depends on where the deficit spending goes. I would say an investment into infrastructure is probably best place to deficit spend and I'll tell you why. For the past decade, a large portion of the US's spending is going into the war and defense effort. The money thus are funneled into the pockets of those who work to manufacture and assemble weapons such as guns and tanks. Those people spend the money on the local economy which will probably the nearest town to the facility. This generates little money movement.

Now infrastructure such as HSR provides a two-fold boost to the economy. In addition to funneling money to those who manufacture and assemble trains and rails (those people will also spend money on the local economy), the infrastructure also provide economic boost in the area that it serves by decreasing travel cost and spurring interaction between businesses. Those who work in those businesses that benefitted will also spend on the local economy.

Of course deficit spending is not always good, but government spending is not inherently bad. Pretend that the government is a single entity(like a person) who just happens to receive income(taxes) by providing services(such as education, healthcare, etc) just like everybody else. In order for an economy to grow, people have to spend. Thus government spending is similar to a person buying goods. Unlike a single person however, the government have enough money to actually impact the economy alone.
 
Infrastructure spending is only ever a real 'stimulus' during a depression/recession if what is being built would have been built by private industry if the economy wasn't in a rut. The TVA dams and rural electrification are a classic example of this.

There's a few other limited examples where a prohibitive cost for industry prevented a private infrastructure project, but the strong desire was there, and the government built the project in order to reap the benefits from industry. The Panama and Suez canals would be examples of that. In those cases borrowing from future tax revenues made sense.

In any case, if there isn't an existing demand for the infrastructure, building it isn't going to cause a supply side growth. I don't a lot of the borrowing from the future and "investing" in infrastructure as planned by the government right now as being beneficial. Most of the projects are boondoggles which will never repay their costs in any form.

Other than the NEC and a few key investments in freight infrastructure in the central US to eliminate bottlenecks, government funded rail isn't a good investment.

Now if the government wanted to pay for superconductor transmission lines to upgrade the electrical grid to be dramatically more efficient. Or to build hundreds of new pebble bed reactor nuclear power plants along with a spent fuel reprocessing program, that would be a worthy investment which WOULD REPAY the borrowed cost.
 
Lurker said:
You're really going to drag Paul "I love 'enlightened' Chinese dictatorship" Krugman into this?

Anyway, you know you love it. Just keeping AB interesting.
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You're thinking of Friedman, and though it is off topic, he was basically comparing one party rule to a two party system in which one party's only purpose is to halt everything the other party attempts to accomplish. China obviously has its many faults, but his point was, I think, that they're kicking our ass in a lot of ways, partly because it was nigh impossible to get anything done in the US do to the Republican minority's contrarian nonsense.

For something more relevant to this discussion, see The Austerity Delusion, Krugman's column from last Thursday.
 
The need for austerity is a delusion?

The OMB has reported that for FY2011, revenues won?t cover mandatory outlays, much less discretionary spending. If we taxed all income over $1 million at 100%, we would still have to cut about $400+ billion to zero the deficit and still do nothing to help the debt.

Denial isn?t a river in Egypt.
 
Lurker said:
The need for austerity is a delusion?

The OMB has reported that for FY2011, revenues won?t cover mandatory outlays, much less discretionary spending. If we taxed all income over $1 million at 100%, we would still have to cut about $400+ billion to zero the deficit and still do nothing to help the debt.

Denial isn?t a river in Egypt.
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Denial is a two syllable word. For which I have two words: Mission Accompli... oh wait. What!!, we're still in Iraqistan? Oh.

I am trying to politely but pretty sarcastically reject your view without actually typing it out. But after a few hours of reflecting on how or if to respond I cannot help my self. Nothing personal at all below, but you know better.

Because you of course are an adult and know pebble reactors and the electrical grid will never be funded in a blatant way -- if at all -- by public money. And because you of course know that building or re-building roads is a bigger boondoggle "which will never repay [its] costs in any form." And because you of course know that while we continue to build or rebuild roads, even in the most optomistic economic ROI forecast they also require "a perpetual government subsidy [which] is never going to contribute anything to the economy except debt." And because you of course know that existing highway subsidies far exceed even the largest proposed rail subsidies in the US.

Maybe we can respectfully disagree and move on after I gently point out that, if not for the Bush wars finally being brought onto the budget by the current Islamo-Fascist, Socialist, Commie, Nazi, Al Queda, Sunni, Shiite, un-documented alien, anchor-baby, baby-killing, lesbian-licking, Jesus-hating, Jew-loving, Muslim traitor occupying the Oval Office, the illusion of nearly-balanced budget would have lasted longer.

Those damn discretionary war expenditures having to be accounted for! How dare he! (Let us all sit quietly to reflect on the Great White Bush and murmer our whispered adoration to the off-budget killing and war profiteering funded -- blindly and blatantly, with no oversight! --- by members of both parties during the Bush, Jr. years. And let us Praise Him, he of the Shrub, he the Clearer of Brush, he the Decider; because it was all done in the name of *~*Patriotism*~*, Gawd, 09/11? and Tom Ridge)

___________________________________________________

Fact is: infrastructure improvement in nearly any form is beneficial to economic expansion, jobs creation and the overall health of the union. Doesn't really matter if it's roads, bridges, waterways, the grid, the internet or rail. All are failing or are broken. We are years behind our peer/competitive countries. It's time for the US to shit or get off the pot.
 
I can't believe you spent several hours reflecting on a brief posting. I must say that throwing out every hateful political caricature in your response was rather moving and illustrative as to your state of mind.

Do you honestly think the proper response to 8 years of gross discretionary overspending was the biggest orgy of discretionary spending ever?
 
Lurker said:
I can't believe you spent several hours reflecting on a brief posting. I must say that throwing out every hateful political caricature in your response was rather moving and illustrative as to your state of mind.

Do you honestly think the proper response to 8 years of gross discretionary overspending was the biggest orgy of discretionary spending ever?
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I think both our stripes are showing. The inference you make is that I voted for or agree with the current administration's policies. I do not.

I'm no fool. The CCC/WPA will never happen again. And that's unfortunate because it's what I think this country desperately needs.
 
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