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Florida scraps high-speed rail plan pushed by Obama

apdst said:
Because, it's time for the government to be run like a business
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The government is NOT a business. Does the military turn a profit? Do the interstate highways turn a profit? Do public schools turn a profit? No...yet they're all vital for the well-being of our economy as a whole. They all provide far more benefits than costs, it's just that those benefits accrue to society instead of to the government.
 
apdst said:
Because, it's time for the government to be run like a business
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No, that's a horrible idea. Business should be run like a business. Government should be run like a government. There's nothing worse than believing that somehow the government should be a business, governments are never businesses, they are governments. The government doesn't need to produce a profit, the government merely needs to exist. There are things that government can do well, there are things that business can do well. There are things both do poorly; they can operate in a manner to offset those poor abilities. Let business be concerned with being a business and let government be concerned with being a government.
 
Kandahar said:
The government is NOT a business. Does the military turn a profit? Do the interstate highways turn a profit? Do public schools turn a profit? No...yet they're all vital for the well-being of our economy as a whole. They all provide far more benefits than costs, it's just that those benefits accrue to society instead of to the government.
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Can you imagine a society where the military, highway systems, public schools, and justice systems were for-profit? It would be insane. I don't think many of these people realize what they are fighting for.
 
whysoserious said:
Can you imagine a society where the military, highway systems, public schools, and justice systems were for-profit? It would be insane. I don't think many of these people realize what they are fighting for.
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No man, think of the possibilities! Our military could essentially be mercenaries; we can hire out to whatever government is willing to pay us. It would be great! Of course, we could never inject morals into that system; it's merely a system of profit...like a business. Whatever gives us the best profit is the direction we take.
 
Kandahar said:
The government is NOT a business. Does the military turn a profit? Do the interstate highways turn a profit? Do public schools turn a profit? No...yet they're all vital for the well-being of our economy as a whole. They all provide far more benefits than costs, it's just that those benefits accrue to society instead of to the government.
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That attitude is the reason that so much government spending is wasted on bull****. The government needs to be run like a business. If it were, we would have a trillion dollar deficite.
 
Ikari said:
No, that's a horrible idea. Business should be run like a business. Government should be run like a government. There's nothing worse than believing that somehow the government should be a business, governments are never businesses, they are governments. The government doesn't need to produce a profit, the government merely needs to exist. There are things that government can do well, there are things that business can do well. There are things both do poorly; they can operate in a manner to offset those poor abilities. Let business be concerned with being a business and let government be concerned with being a government.
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And government should be run like a business. The government shouldn't be spending money that it doesn't have. It sure as hell shouldn't be borrowing money to payoff debt; that's totally idiotic.
 
apdst said:
And government should be run like a business. The government shouldn't be spending money that it doesn't have. It sure as hell shouldn't be borrowing money to payoff debt; that's totally idiotic.
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All government spends money it doesn't have. You're saying that we should wait to have cash on hand to make highway contracts that last a decade or so for highway repair? No, of course not. Nothing would get done that way. It's government, it makes the multiyear contracts and pays out as income comes into the State. The government has to operate in this manner because of the scale of things it must do. This isn't some little business putting in a parking lot. This is national level transportation. It's expensive, it's on a grand and aggregated scale, and it requires government which behaves like government to undertake.

If you force government to run like business, then both business and government have the same fail modes instead of having offsetting fail modes. Wanting to force both government and business into the same fail modes, now that's totally idiotic
 
apdst said:
And government should be run like a business. The government shouldn't be spending money that it doesn't have. It sure as hell shouldn't be borrowing money to payoff debt; that's totally idiotic.
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OK, let's look at this from a business perspective. When do businesses LOVE to borrow money? When they're investing in a long-term asset. High-speed rail is a perfect example of that. So rather than thinking "a complete high-speed rail system will cost $53 billion we don't have," it's better to consider the entire lifetime of the system. So if we go with a rather pessimistic view that it will only provide benefits for 25 years, that's roughly $2 billion per year.

Chump change.
 
Ikari said:
All government spends money it doesn't have. You're saying that we should wait to have cash on hand to make highway contracts that last a decade or so for highway repair? No, of course not. Nothing would get done that way. It's government, it makes the multiyear contracts and pays out as income comes into the State. The government has to operate in this manner because of the scale of things it must do. This isn't some little business putting in a parking lot. This is national level transportation. It's expensive, it's on a grand and aggregated scale, and it requires government which behaves like government to undertake.

If you force government to run like business, then both business and government have the same fail modes instead of having offsetting fail modes. Wanting to force both government and business into the same fail modes, now that's totally idiotic
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So, when the government had a surplus in funds, that was bad?
 
Kandahar said:
OK, let's look at this from a business perspective. When do businesses LOVE to borrow money? When they're investing in a long-term asset. High-speed rail is a perfect example of that. So rather than thinking "a complete high-speed rail system will cost $53 billion we don't have," it's better to consider the entire lifetime of the system. So if we go with a rather pessimistic view that it will only provide benefits for 25 years, that's roughly $2 billion per year.

Chump change.
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They also borrow money when they're sure they're going to make a profit. Ding, ding, ding!!!
 
apdst said:
They also borrow money when they're sure they're going to make a profit. Ding, ding, ding!!!
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A corporation's objective is to make the corporation better off; a government's objective is NOT to make the government better off, it's to make society better off. If the government tried to line its own pockets, people would rightly be outraged by the corruption.

Government basically represents society as a whole, as it was elected by the public. It provides services to society that are NOT profitable for private enterprise...military, infrastructure, education, etc. Therefore instead of asking whether "government" can afford something or whether it can turn a profit, we should instead be asking whether "society" can afford something or whether it can turn a profit (i.e. if the economic benefits outweigh the costs).

This notion of profits is ridiculous when it comes to government spending. The costs of a high-speed rail system are born by society; government is merely the vehicle through which they are collected. The benefits, on the other hand, accrue directly to society without passing through the government coffers first. By that measure, of course it's not going to be "profitable" if you're merely looking at the government's balance sheet rather than how it affects the economy as a whole.
 
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Kandahar said:
A corporation's objective is to make the corporation better off; a government's objective is NOT to make the government better off, it's to make society better off. If the government tried to line its own pockets, people would rightly be outraged by the corruption.

Government basically represents society as a whole, as it was elected by the public. It provides services to society that are NOT profitable for private enterprise...military, infrastructure, education, etc. Therefore instead of asking whether "government" can afford something or whether it can turn a profit, we should instead be asking whether "society" can afford something or whether it can turn a profit (i.e. if the economic benefits outweigh the costs).

This notion of profits is ridiculous when it comes to government spending. The costs of a high-speed rail system are born by society; government is merely the vehicle through which they are collected. The benefits, on the other hand, accrue directly to society without passing through the government coffers first. By that measure, of course it's not going to be "profitable" if you're merely looking at the government's balance sheet rather than how it affects the economy as a whole.
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Exactly! And if the rail is able to turn a profit, or even come close to matching expendatures, then the rail is able to pay for itself by charging per use instead of through tax. Apdst is quite upset at the notion of paying taxes to keep up a rail, but he pays taxes to keep up the highway. If instead of taxes, they put a toll on every road and forced him to pay per use, his trucking industry would face major issues in profitability!

So really, for Apdst, this is more about his interests than about society as a whole. He has no problem with highway projects because he pays a fair tax for them instead of per use. That is his gain. He uses the system more than most (in fact he uses it to make a profit), but he pays in the same percentage as anyone else. Yet, when there is a project such a rail that requires taxes to build and then some taxes to maintain, he is offended by it.

These types of people are hard to argue with because they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works and they also refuse to see it from any other perspective.
 
Kandahar said:
A corporation's objective is to make the corporation better off; a government's objective is NOT to make the government better off, it's to make society better off. If the government tried to line its own pockets, people would rightly be outraged by the corruption.

Government basically represents society as a whole, as it was elected by the public. It provides services to society that are NOT profitable for private enterprise...military, infrastructure, education, etc. Therefore instead of asking whether "government" can afford something or whether it can turn a profit, we should instead be asking whether "society" can afford something or whether it can turn a profit (i.e. if the economic benefits outweigh the costs).

This notion of profits is ridiculous when it comes to government spending. The costs of a high-speed rail system are born by society; government is merely the vehicle through which they are collected. The benefits, on the other hand, accrue directly to society without passing through the government coffers first. By that measure, of course it's not going to be "profitable" if you're merely looking at the government's balance sheet rather than how it affects the economy as a whole.
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It's objective is to operate within it's means. That's what's good for society.
 
whysoserious said:
Exactly! And if the rail is able to turn a profit, or even come close to matching expendatures, then the rail is able to pay for itself by charging per use instead of through tax. Apdst is quite upset at the notion of paying taxes to keep up a rail, but he pays taxes to keep up the highway. If instead of taxes, they put a toll on every road and forced him to pay per use, his trucking industry would face major issues in profitability!

So really, for Apdst, this is more about his interests than about society as a whole. He has no problem with highway projects because he pays a fair tax for them instead of per use. That is his gain. He uses the system more than most (in fact he uses it to make a profit), but he pays in the same percentage as anyone else. Yet, when there is a project such a rail that requires taxes to build and then some taxes to maintain, he is offended by it.

These types of people are hard to argue with because they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works and they also refuse to see it from any other perspective.
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That's right and I'm going to be even more upset, if I have to even more in taxes, to pay for this piece-a-**** train.
 
You can't simply count the cost. We didn't count the cost when we decided to land a man on the moon. High speed rail will work but it has to be highly subsidized by the federal government. This is one of the few endeavors that I think government can and should do. Payback will be way, way down the line. It is the nature of the beast. The longer we wait the more it will cost and the further out we will the push the payback. You can't judge this idea by how we live our lives today. Cheap gas and cars won't be around forever. Get this started for the future and put people to work today.
 
apdst said:
That's right and I'm going to be even more upset, if I have to even more in taxes, to pay for this piece-a-**** train.
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Do you or do you not support the interstate highway system? Is whysoserious correct that you'd be screaming bloody murder if you actually had to pay for it in proportion to the amount that you used it?
 
Kandahar said:
Do you or do you not support the interstate highway system? Is whysoserious correct that you'd be screaming bloody murder if you actually had to pay for it in proportion to the amount that you used it?
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I already do! :rofl

Ever hear of IFTA, or IRP? I have to report my mileage, per state, every year and I'm charged according to that + heavy road use tax + fuel taxes. And, now, I'm going to have to pay for this dumbass train, too?

So, go peddle that bull**** to somebody that doesn't know any better.
 
apdst said:
I already do! :rofl

Ever hear of IFTA, or IRP? I have to report my mileage, per state, every year and I'm charged according to that + heavy road use tax + fuel taxes. And, now, I'm going to have to pay for this dumbass train, too?

So, go peddle that bull**** to somebody that doesn't know any better.
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Yeahhhh...you just lost all credibility on this issue. I'm no longer going to respond to you in this thread, because I no longer believe that you are arguing in good faith. You're just arguing for whatever benefits your pocketbook the most, rather than any kind of principled or pragmatic view of what's best for the nation. Toodles!
 
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Kandahar said:
Yeahhhh...you just lost all credibility on this issue. I'm no longer going to respond to you in this thread, because I no longer believe that you are arguing in good faith. You're just arguing for whatever benefits your pocketbook the most, rather than any kind of principled or pragmatic view of what's best for society. Toodles!
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and you're surprised why?
 
Kandahar said:
Yeahhhh...you just lost all credibility on this issue. I'm no longer going to respond to you in this thread, because I no longer believe that you are arguing in good faith. You're just arguing for whatever benefits your pocketbook the most, rather than any kind of principled or pragmatic view of what's best for the nation. Toodles!
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Obviously, you can't understand that the more money I make, the better off the economy--as well as the government coffirs--will be. Do you even have a job?
 
I think this train is actually a good investment. It would provide jobs, and ultimately allow the unemployed a wider scale of jobs to find. If im going to pay taxes I would rather it go to a train system then the pile of crap that is Obamacare.
 
apdst said:
So, when the government had a surplus in funds, that was bad?
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It's not bad to have surplus funds, it's just not necessary.
 
apdst said:
Obviously, you can't understand that the more money I make, the better off the economy--as well as the government coffirs--will be. Do you even have a job?
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To a degree. But not in what we're talking about here. The money you'd save by not building the high speed rail won't significantly increase your personal impact on the economy. However, the thousands of jobs that would be produced because of building the high speed rail would have a significantly greater impact on the economy.
 
Ikari said:
You know how great it would be if we had an actual, factual high speed rail? That would make a GREAT alternative to flying. If it took 5 hours to get from Denver to Chicago on train...**** I'd be going to well more Cubs games. New York to Chicago, Chicago to LA, link up all these major cities and then slowly expand off the backbone. True high speed rail would have major benefits for our country as well as providing many many jobs during the construction phase for which we can use to alivieate some of the burden on the middle and lower class experienced by this economic downturn. I would have much rather let the "too big to fail" jerks actually fail; see some of those CEOs in the gutter, and use that money to invest in a high speed rail and other work projects until the economy can recover enough for private business to take over.
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The only problem with that is that people in the US generally dont adequately use mass transit. How expensive is AMTRAK? In Florida the rail proposal is ONLY from Tampa to Orlando at a current cost of 2.4 billion but projected cost of over 3 billion. So its great if you live in either location...but why should taxpayers in Montana be forced to foot the bill for an under-utilized in-state rail system? Im fine with the concept if citizens in Illinois and Colorado want to jointly fund a Chicago to Denver project.

In case anyone has missed it, we are 14 trillion dollars in debt. The Florida project requires the state to pay for cost overruns for operating the rail for a minimum of 20 years (they are already paying 13 million a year above and beyond user fees to maintain their current rail system).

We are a nation on crack when it comes to the fed spending taxpayer dollars.

Reason Foundation - Florida Taxpayers Ultimately Responsible for Extra High-Speed Rail Costs
 
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