Should the government pay for a high-speed rail system?
A high-speed rail lines have been proposed by some intelligent members of our great forum, I decided I might present a somewhat overlooked side of this issue.
Just to set things straight airline subsidies, and the roads being paid for by tax dollars are hardly an excuse to. I am not against a new passenger rail service, but should Uncle Sam be paying for it? Well, for the answer let us turn back the years and listen to what the founding fathers have said.
Before Uncle Sam was so fat on government pork. …a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring each one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of a good government.”- Thomas Jefferson, 1801
Building an expanded rail system with government money, is hardly keeping a wise and frugal government; sure our government may not be and wise or frugal as it once was, but we need to move in the right direction.
“The public money of this country is the toil and labor of the people, who are under many uncommon difficulties and distresses at this time, so that all reasonable frugality ought to be observed.” -John Adams, 1735-1826.
Should people be forced to toil to pay for it, which don’t want to, what kind of freedom would that be?
Surely taxes would have to be raised to pay for a rail system. Avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”- George Washington.
I think the idea of the government paying for any thing like the suggested rail system should be shunned.
Just my opinion,but, I think that HSR is gonna be THE next big swindle. And I expect it to go over like this:
Peoples emotions will be played, offering to return passenger rail to a lot of communities that lost out as Amtral shrank and contracted over the decades.
Some crook will come up with the great idea that abandoned right of ways can be used, with taxpayer funded rehab to the roadbed…
Calls will be made for local level 'matching funds" just like the robber barons of the 19th century called ipon cities to pay for a route to their towns.
The game plan will suggest that building a 110-120 mile an hour “startup” operation makes the most sense, with the REAL hi speed to come “later”
‘Later’ will never come,…instead the construction companies that build phase one will pocket the federal and local level contributions, and it will be decided that demand/ridership is too weak to justify the full blown HSR…
So, the money spent will go a long way to enriching the principals of the plan, and the tax payers get handed a white elephant.
Jefferson and Adams have been gone for a few years now and it is impossible to say that they would have retained their 18th Century views if they had lived to the present time. What is certain is that the changes that have occured over the last two centuries makes those views moot. Many will argue that were it not for government expenditures to build infrastructure and develope technology our society would not have advanced as far as we have. That may or may not be true, but the situation is not going to be reversed. If you want to live in times like theirs, you are going to have to find a time machine or move to a present day third world country.
You are entirely entitled to take the view that with cars and airplanes there is no need for rail passenger service. But given that these modes are supported by government expenditures, there is no way that rail passenger service will be a profitable. With no profit potential, there will be no private investment in the busines, and so, absent government money, there will be no rail passenger service. That’s the choice.
Swindles are the result of people not being able to differentiate between between style and substance. If all the younger people I know had such a cynical attitude, I would be looking for a nice third world country.
That is hardly the case. These are fundamental principles, with extreme bearing to today’s events. Why do you decide what views are moot, where does it stop, the Declaration of Impendence, the Constitution, our own Bill of Rights, The Bible, where I ask you? Indeed I say, that if these views are moot, then all wisdom of old is lost, and we are doomed; a fate worse than death at that, the fate of ignorance. If rejected what is to keep our country from going down the long slippery path of socialism France took; If the foundation of our country is allowed to crumble, and freedom becomes a myth, all the deaths of the Revolution, Civil war, and many others, were in vain.
“Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly."- Thomas Jefferson, 1816” To proclaim these views outdated is to make a mockery of all they worked so hard for! Is even Liberty outdated?
You have missed the point entirely; it was these very principles that allowed society to get as far as it did. Assuming that history too is not moot. Let us take a look back even father into antiquity; back to the old Roman Republic. In 500 B.C. the inhabitants of Britain lived in primitive log huts with dirt floors. Along cam those old principles of capitalism and freedom, in the form of the Roman Republic, which our founding fathers had the wisdom to base our society on the same ideals. By 200A.D Roman civilization brought large tile roofed bu
I think you’re a bit wide of the mark here about the Roman Empire. It was not on the brink of an industrial revolution in the 5th century; if anything it had been in decline for the last century. The Germanictribes who conquered the Roman empire in Western Europe in the 5th century AD (and gave their names to the countries we now now, eg Angle-land = England, Franks - France) were able to do so because they had better swords than the Romans! Equally important though, they also had better ploughs. This meant the Angles and Saxons were able to farm
I think the founding fathers were a group of fairly rich farmers and traders who were interested in conducting business without government interference. Consider for a moment that most of the colonial citizens were loyal subjects of the King- not fire breathing revolutionaries.
When railroads first developed, it was the wealthy miners, industrialists, and farmers who realized what the potential was of a new transportation system in the USA. Most railroads were built not for passenger service- but to carry freight. They have been doing that well for over a century and a half. Then, as now, early railroads wanted government support in terms of land grants (for right of way) and bonds (for capital to lay rails.)
As railroads grew, so too did government regulation. When it became apparent that railroads were fast becoming the haven for con artists, press agents, and speculators, the government moved in with a vengeance. The regulation was not so much over passenger service, but freight rates and trust combinations.
The business of America is concerned with producing goods, and moving them. Moving people is far and away a secondary consideration.
By the way, early roads in the USA were, in many cases, privately owned- the owners paid for upkeep by charging tolls- thus the beginning of “toll roads”.
This is quite true but the Federal Government built the National Highway from Tidewater to the Ohio River, the state of New York financed the Erie Canal and the state of Maryland invested heavily in the Baltimore and Ohio at its start up. Many other states and cities financed internal improvements well before the start of the industrial revolution in the 1860s.
In the book mentioned early, he refers to this need to conquer as the Roman Disease, but you have to admit, Rome could not have expanded a vast empire like she did, had she not first formed the Roman Republic. Merely an analogy between the two countries, admittedly the idea of an industrial revolution, is just speculation on the part of the author. The ancient Greeks and the Romans were surprisingly advanced, they had water clocks, which told time, and may have figured the position of the stars, accurate odometers for roads, and other advanced mechanisms, like flame throwers. Things that wouldn’t be rediscovered for nearly 2000 years. Also the Catholic church persecuted anyone
I am in complete agreement with the founding fathers but there is a fine line between the role of the government and private enterprise. The Trancontinental railroad opened up the west. No conmpany existed that coulkd have done that. The electronics and computers we have today are a direct result of the space program and the need for weight reduction to get capsules into outer space so there is benefit beyond the initial effort. I draw the line if the government needs to take away private citizens holdings for right of way and not compensate them and builds bridges to Alaskan islands nobody wants, etc.
No scholar in his right mind would consider taking Shakespeare at face value - he/she would insist on knowing about the environment in which old Bill wrote. I’m no Shakespearean scholar, but I do know that there are all sorts of puns written into those works, puns that go right over our heads today.
So too must we consider the thoughts/writings of our founding fathers in light of the times in which they occurred. Much of the Constitution deals with correcting the wrongs of the Brits as perceived by the colonists. That’s not to say that they were wrong, since they paved the road to where we are today. But to take those thoughts/writings verbatim without considering history is to do a disservice to their originators.
Ericthered makes that very point.
The old toll roads were mentioned. It would be an interesting study, forecasting where transportation would be today if its development had been left entirely to the private sector…
I can’t help but to think your post was intended as a polite slap in the face of sorts. Which is fine, I won’t be ~shamed~ into accepting the nonsense that I’ve seen the proponents trying to force down the throat of the gullible and the forlorn
I could go on and on with a rant about my misgivings on the discussion I’ve seen to date.
But it would only aggravate the sheep .
Foremost among my reservations would be the way the private parties willing to enter into the proposed “partnership” are not willing to quantify their own level of (monetary) contribution to the plan, Nor are they even willing to identify who they really are, they just time and again troll some big juicy worm through the pond, trying to see how many fools (mooneyed taxpayers) might be ready to “bite”.
When the topic passes through the local media, the response tends to inspire the impressionable into making starry eyed “water cooler” talk along the lines of “hey did you hear? we might be getting HSR!” with all the analytical prowess if a drunken sailor on shore leave… No thought. as to where it will be going, whether it will be able to support itself, or what actual public good it will serve, they just get giddy with the joy of “getting something” like kids waiting for Santa to come sliding down the chimney.
Ebeneezer Scrouge said it best "Bah HUMBUG!! [;)][;)]
I can’t help but to think your post was intended as a polite slap in the face of sorts. Which is fine, I won’t be ~shamed~ into accepting the nonsense that I’ve seen the proponents trying to force down the throat of the gullible and the forlorn
I could go on and on with a rant about my misgivings on the discussion I’ve seen to date.
But it would only aggravate the sheep .
Foremost among my reservations would be the way the private parties willing to enter into the proposed “partnership” are not willing to quantify their own level of (monetary) contribution to the plan, Nor are they even willing to identify who they really are, they just time and again troll some big juicy worm through the pond, trying to see how many fools (mooneyed taxpayers) might be ready to “bite”.
When the topic passes through the local media, the response tends to inspire the impressionable into making starry eyed “water cooler” talk along the lines of “hey did you hear? we might be getting HSR!” with all the analytical prowess if a drunken sailor on shore leave… No thought. as to where it will be going, whether it will be able to support itself, or what actual public good it will serve, they just get giddy with the joy of “getting something” like kids waiting for Santa to come sliding down the chimney.
Ebeneezer Scrouge said it best "Bah HUMBUG!! [;)][;)]
I must agree, why should the general public pay for somehting,that the vast majority of the populas will never utilize?
When and where did the American people begin to assume
Right on! And one of the more nonsensical arguments I hear to the question of “why should the gov’t pay?” usually goes along the lines of “well the gov’t subsidizes air and highway, so they owe it to rail”
(Or some similar nonsense) which to me sounds like they are saying "well your son is addicted to heroin, maybe he should try crack too?
Trade and Commerce requires an ability to move people and goods about a nation, The American transportation paradigm is changing, and those unwilling to change will get left behind… Self-deprecating cynicism seems to rule in this country, along with a lack of any positive atrtitudes. Change is inevitable and economic force is undeniable, the strength in a system is in its ability to accept new technologies, incorporate them and enjoy the benefits. Those that cannot adapt will become extinct.