Originally posted by no1marauder
Have you considered externalities in your dismissal of high speed rail projects?
Anyway, isn't there a lot of public infrastructure that needs repairing? Roads, bridges, canals, etc. etc.?
From what I've read on the issue of high speed rail, high speed rail only makes sense between heavily populated areas that are about 150-200 miles from each other. It's just incredibly expensive to build and maintain. A train that goes 55-60 mph between Cleveland and Columbus wouldn't be sustained without a lot of subsidy. I can't speak for all the other lines however. Some may make sense.
Now there may be externalities that make the social return to the rail lines larger, but they would have to be very large to extend that 150-200 miles figure much farther.
As for other infrastructure work, I'm sure that repairs are needed. I'm just dubious about how much return a huge repair project would bring. After all, if these projects are such high return, why weren't they being done before?
Still, this economy is really in the toilet and nothing conventional seems to be working, so I'm going to be in less of a hurry to scoff at unorthodox ideas. Mainly, I want to stress that all these pundits (and the people who echo them) that keep saying, "Well, you just gotta create more jobs," or "Why hasn't Obama (or the Repub house) made more jobs," tend to have very few concrete ideas themselves.
On another note, did any of you read Alan Blinder's WSJ article laying out his job creation idea?
Massive profits. Where is the hiring???
12 Jul '11 03:091 edit
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