China spending their $$$ on infrastructure, not stupid entitlements.

[mrplunkey]

That's rationale. Who are we kidding? They'll never go for it.

Fuck libs / cons!

The problem is political conservatives get dumped into the same bucket as social conservative ones.

 

[musclemom]

Not to be snarky or anything but China has approximately the same land mass as the U.S., with 4x the population. The U.S. has about 4x the billionaires and about 3x the millionaires that China does.

If that's the figure you want to use to measure for success of something, anyway.

I completely agree that the U.S. public transportation system is abysmal. Blame Henry Ford.

 

[canadianhitman]

I completely agree that the U.S. public transportation system is abysmal. Blame Henry Ford.

There's nothing wrong with having a car culture...just be sure to provide more attractive options that are more efficient as well. There are too many large cities in the US that either have too small a subway system, or none at all, and the railways are so antiquated it's embarassing. There's no excuse for not having any high-speed train service between major cities. The link the Chinese just built is 820 miles...you could link NYC to Chicago by equaling it. You could also link Boston to NYC, NYC to Philly, and Philly to Washington DC by builing less than 500 miles of track. That'd be a heck of a start to a US high-speed rail system. There was plenty of money for that project during the flush Clinton years...too bad Bubba the lib spent it in ways where you now have nothing to show for all those billions.

 

[EnderJE]

The problem is political conservatives get dumped into the same bucket as social conservative ones.

I dont' think of it as lib vs cons anymore. I think of it as rationals vs the crazies.

The crazies can't seem to have an objective conversation about something.

 

[EnderJE]

There's nothing wrong with having a car culture...just be sure to provide more attractive options that are more efficient as well. There are too many large cities in the US that either have too small a subway system, or none at all, and the railways are so antiquated it's embarassing. There's no excuse for not having any high-speed train service between major cities. The link the Chinese just built is 820 miles...you could link NYC to Chicago by equaling it. You could also link Boston to NYC, NYC to Philly, and Philly to Washington DC by builing less than 500 miles of track. That'd be a heck of a start to a US high-speed rail system. There was plenty of money for that project during the flush Clinton years...too bad Bubba the lib spent it in ways where you now have nothing to show for all those billions.

You mean other then the war? 'Cause as I recall he tried to spend it on other things, but they were rejected by the others.

The challenge with a large project is that you need foresight to see it.

My sense is that people may not have that vision or see it as a pipe dream.

 

[mrplunkey]

I dont' think of it as lib vs cons anymore. I think of it as rationals vs the crazies.

The crazies can't seem to have an objective conversation about something.

The debate we should be having in the US is the role of government. There are people who see the government as a solution to a broad set of challenges and people who see the government as a necessary evil. I'm obviously biased toward the latter view because of a two fundamental principles:

1) Governments can't make decisions that are as good or timely as individuals. It isn't that they don't mean well, but no central planning can compete with the push-and-pull of millions of people making billions of small-scale economic decisions.

2) Governments still have to be implemented by people, so relationships, bias and ultimately full-blown corruption is inevitable.

 

[canadianhitman]

The challenge with a large project is that you need foresight to see it.

My sense is that people may not have that vision or see it as a pipe dream.

I don't want to believe that the country that put a man on the moon doesn't have vision/foresight anymore. Just need to put the right people in charge to 1) fix the economy and 2) not squander the money when times are good again

 

[EnderJE]

I don't want to believe that the country that put a man on the moon doesn't have vision/foresight anymore. Just need to put the right people in charge to 1) fix the economy and 2) not squander the money when times are good again

Foresight generally comes from a central planned / controlled environment. We've established that a centrally planned environment doesn't work out well.

 

[mrplunkey]

Foresight generally comes from a central planned / controlled environment. We've established that a centrally planned environment doesn't work out well.

We could always do something dramatic like leave the money in the hands of the people who've already made it (thus establishing a proven track record) and see if they can figure-out where to invest it next.

 

[EnderJE]

We could always do something dramatic like leave the money in the hands of the people who've already made it (thus establishing a proven track record) and see if they can figure-out where to invest it next.

The only fear with that approach is how it can result in robber barrons or cause another financial meltdown with risky financial instruments.

I completely understand that the stance is a knee jerk reaction to a few bad people, but given the recent outcome, I'm guessing that you would agree that people would be gunshy for it. However, if we're talking about manufacturing or something else of that nature (vs the IMF or something like that), then it would be a different story.