Tav advocates for Grand Theft Railroad

[GCBill]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023330099

Taverner (54,154 posts)

AMTRAK: Completely nationalize, rebuild and then give to the workers

Last edited Wed Jul 24, 2013, 01:06 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Amtrak should be completely revamped with bullet trains, subsidized fares and extensive routes

The only way this could happen would be to take over Amtrak completely, rebuild it with bullet trains - - and then instead of selling it to the highest bidder, simply turn it over to those who already run it (the workers)

Make them all owners of the railway

Amtrak is technically considered a "for-profit" corporation, but it is running at a loss with government subsidies covering the shortfall from revenues, and the stock is owned by the Federal government. So it ALREADY IS nationalized!

So, if it is given to the employees so they become business owners, will they be working for a share in profits (which they don't have) instead of wages, like many other stock holders and business owners do?

A spoil sport points out the fly in the ointment:

Brickbat (14,730 posts)
6. People really don't have any idea when it comes to trackage, trackage rights, "bullet trains" and

other rail issues. It's just not that easy.

Taverner's solution? Unconstitutional theft by the government!

Taverner (54,154 posts)
8. We gave them the rails with the Homestead Act, we can take them back

Hey Taverner! Have you ever checked this out:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

[USA4ME]

Anytime the answer you receive from someone is "Here's what Marx would do," you're asking questions to an idiot who needs to just shut up.

.

[JohnnyReb]

"Bullet Trains"......where it's legal to shoot any DUmmie that gets on the train......hey, they do it in the subways.

[jukin]

IIRc, Amtrak serves a $16 hamburger where they only lose $6 on each one. I assume that this is the closest to profit that any part of Amtrak's operations.


Choo-Choo!![/Joe Biden]

[GOBUCKS]

Go to a heroin addict if you want to understand the details of the American rail system.

Things would be different if we were a little shithole European country, where you could take a golf cart from one border to the next, and where people were used to third-world standards like no personal transport.

The jug-eared Kenyan and his democrat allies are still light-years away from wrecking the American way of life.

[jukin]

Go to a heroin addict if you want to understand the details of the American rail system.

Things would be different if we were a little shithole European country, where you could take a golf cart from one border to the next, and where people were used to third-world standards like no personal transport.

The jug-eared Kenyan and his democrat allies are still light-years away from wrecking the American way of life.

They have made amazing progress though. We have fallen from number 2 in economic freedom to number 18. For every part time job that 0bama all by himself has created two people have gone on food stamps. Still are 9.5 million fewer jobs in the USA under the economic genius of Barky and he has accomplished all this by borrowing almost 50% of the total economic output of the USA.

[txradioguy]

ast edited Wed Jul 24, 2013, 01:06 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Amtrak should be completely revamped with bullet trains, subsidized fares and extensive routes

That's one of the reasons they're in the trouble they're in now you moron. 

[Karin]

An environmental whacko DUmmie expresses a concern, but Tavs is on it:

Response to NoOneMan (Reply #26)
Wed Jul 24, 2013, 02:36 PM
 Taverner (54,160 posts)
27. Solar power most of it

Build the panels first, then the infrastructure

 

[Big Dog]

An environmental whacko DUmmie expresses a concern, but Tavs is on it:

 

Solar...railroad.

Damn, that's brilliant.

 

Wait, what is the opposite of brilliant again?

 

[Chris_]

Taverner (54,154 posts)

AMTRAK: Completely nationalize, rebuild and then give to the workers

Amtrak should be completely revamped with bullet trains, subsidized fares and extensive routes

The only way this could happen would be to take over Amtrak completely, rebuild it with bullet trains - - and then instead of selling it to the highest bidder, simply turn it over to those who already run it (the workers)

Make them all owners of the railway

Sounds like someone nodded off during the newest 'Atlas Shrugs' movie.

[dutch508]

Solar...railroad.

Damn, that's brilliant.

 

Wait, what is the opposite of brilliant again?

 

DUmpmonkie

[jukin]

Solar...railroad.

I just laughed Negra Medelo out my nose. The dark stuff really hurts.

[obumazombie]

Maybe he needs a theme song for his funky idea...

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc_JcGuH5Z8[/youtube]

[NHSparky]

IIRc, Amtrak serves a $16 hamburger where they only lose $6 on each one. I assume that this is the closest to profit that any part of Amtrak's operations.


Choo-Choo!![/Joe Biden]

As the line from Big Bang Theory goes, "Why, where else can we spend three times as much to get somewhere in five times as long?"

[Big Dog]

Taverner may have been talking to Omaha Steve, who wanted to appropriate a private gas service in Bellevue and turn it over to "the people".

Steve would have been responsible for the starvation of Bellevue's poor children, and the forced conversion of its elderly to catfooditarians.

That whack in the head from the Good Idea Fairy guaranteed Steve's last-place finish in the city council race; even losing out to a cat who ran an effective write-in campaign, despite being deceased.

Taverner should learn the lesson of Omaha Steve.

[Carl]

Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.

[Chris_]

Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.

I'm waiting for the UK to start taxing computers the same way they tax televisions.  It's similar to the way they tax vehicles by horsepower -- depending on the size and type of TV you have in your home, you're billed a use tax to fund public broadcasting.  Having a black-and-white television in your home is a $90 fee.  It goes up from there.

[98ZJUSMC]

Taverner (54,154 posts)

AMTRAK: Completely nationalize, rebuild and then give to the workers

Last edited Wed Jul 24, 2013, 01:06 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Amtrak should be completely revamped with bullet trains, subsidized fares and extensive routes

The only way this could happen would be to take over Amtrak completely, rebuild it with bullet trains - - and then instead of selling it to the highest bidder, simply turn it over to those who already run it (the workers)

Make them all owners of the railway

No real comment on the blithering stupidity and the disconnect from reality that this post-O-shit goes to.

What private entity has anything to do with AMWRECK?

I would really like to know.

[GOBUCKS]

Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.

The only thing that equals it is their obsession and belief in light-rail systems.

Another bottomless money pit.

It's bad enough that we pay for countless thousands of empty buses to meander around towns all over the country.

[98ZJUSMC]

Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.

OHHHH!!!! No it's not.

[GCBill]

Few things illustrate the idiocy of the DUmp as much as their obsession and belief in a free and all inclusive high speed rail system does.
It is logistically impossible.

Is High-Speed Rail a Good Public Investment?
By EDWARD L. GLAESER

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/is-high-speed-rail-a-good-public-investment/?_r=0

 . . .

These ideas are so cheap that unless they are seriously quantified they have no place in the debate. Serious accounting, not clever debating points or soaring rhetoric, is the critical ingredient in good public decision-making.

I will spend the next three blog posts on the major costs and benefits of high-speed rail. The costs include up-front construction and operating costs. The benefits include direct benefits to riders, indirect benefits include reductions in carbon emissions and traffic congestion, and any indirect aid that rail gives to local economies and to national economic recovery.

The up-front costs of rail are primarily the cash outlays, and these are perhaps easiest to quantify. The Government Accountability Office’s summary of building costs in Europe range from $37 million to $53 million a mile. The Japanese lines cost from $82 million to $143 million a mile. (Higher costs in Japan reflect difficult earthquake-prone terrain and expensive land.) Cost estimates in the United States range from $22 million a mile, for a Victorville, Calif., to Las Vegas route, to $132 million a mile for connecting Baltimore and Washington.

These figures are all debatable, but anyone who thinks that the G.A.O. got it wrong needs to come up with alternative figures that are equally plausible. As such, the cost of a 240-mile line, like the one that could connect Dallas and Houston, would probably run about $12 billion, but it could be as cheap as $6 billion or as expensive as $24 billion, and these are the numbers that we have most confidence about.

 . . .

Running the Numbers on High-Speed Trains
By EDWARD L. GLAESER

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/running-the-numbers-on-high-speed-trains/

 . . .

Last week, I cited data from the Government Accountability Office suggesting that $50 million a mile was a reasonable construction cost figure. To make this one-time cost comparable to everything else, which is an annual flow, the fixed cost needs to be converted into an annual cost, which is done by multiplying by an interest rate, capturing the opportunity cost of capital. If that cost of capital is 5 percent (as I said, everything is debatable), then the up-front capital cost is $2.5 million a mile per year, or $600 million for a 240-mile line.

The other cost that is independent of the number of riders is track maintenance. One recent European estimate puts that cost at $140,000 a mile per year for a two-track system. A feasibility study of high-speed rail in Britain came up with the considerably higher figure of $493,000 a mile for surface trains. I’ll stay closer to the lower estimate and go with $200,000 a mile per year, which brings the fixed costs of the track up to $648 million per annum.

Other train costs — rolling stock purchase and maintenance, personnel — more or less scale up or down with the number of passenger miles. Unfortunately, there is plenty of range on these cost estimates. A 12-year-old classic in this field has a number of 10.5 cents a mile (in today’s dollars), but one recent European study comes out at 50 cents a passenger mile. Amtrak’s operating expenses run at about 45 cents a passenger mile. I’ll average between 10 and 50 and plug in 30 cents a passenger mile in operating costs, which comes to $72 for a 240-mile trip.

 . . .

Now it’s just down to multiplying: 1.5 million trips times $68 a trip means $102 million for benefits minus operating costs. Annual capital costs came in $648 million, more than six times that amount. If you think that the right number is three million trips, then the benefits rise to $200 million, and the ratio between the per rider net benefits and costs drops to one-to-three. This is the cruel arithmetic faced by people, like myself, who would love to be pro-rail. One hint for train lovers who would like to make this comparison look better: make a compelling case that the interest rate should be much lower, as nothing else makes nearly as much difference. Also keep in mind that I haven’t brought in the environment or congestion. They’re up next week.

So in Taverner's (and many others) Marxist dream, either the tickets will cost six times as much as they do now, AND all the airlines would have to be prohibited from flying places covered by a high speed rail route, in order for it to be profitable to its owners, the workers of Amtrak.

OR

Amtrak charges whatever they can that gets riders, the workers take a fat salary of whatever they feel like paying themselves, regardless of actual revenue, and WE JUST HAVE THE GOVERNMENT MAKE UP HOWEVER MANY HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS those thousands of miles of barely ridden track cost.

[diesel driver]

So according to Eddie, a 240 mile HS rail link between Houston and Dallas, hauling an average of 4,110 people per day at $70 per ticket, would only generate enough income to cover 1/6th the operational costs.

Sounds like the perfect job for government.   

[BlueStateSaint]

Wait, what is the opposite of brilliant again?

Taverner . . .

[Karin]

Big Dog, I didn't realize the cat was deceased.  I would have written in something more appropriate.  A live dog, maybe.

I'm still laughing today at Tav's solar powered high speed trains.  It's just classic DUmp.

[Skul]

I absolutely agree with tavernturd.  The government should run high-speed rail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2377113/Spain-train-crash-video-At-78-people-killed-140-injured-Santiago-Compostela-derailment.html

'What joy to set police speed guns off': Facebook boast of Spanish driver whose train derailed killing at least 80 people while travelling at 120mph in 50mph limit

Not a soul at the DUmp, brought this up.