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A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

nytimes.com

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Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#41

Post by nerfhammer »

davidf18 wrote: post #3

Money if fungible. California spends an enormous amount of money on illegal aliens (illegal immigrants). For example, there was an NYT op-ed piece which explained that 200 illegal aliens are allowed to attend at in-state tuition UC Berkeley. Thus, the Federal Funds noted in this article were in fact being used to fund people who are residing in this country illegally. We don't even have enough money for the poor who…

> 200 illegal aliens are allowed to attend at in-state tuition

Even assuming your premise here, take the differential between in-state and out-of-state UC tuition and multiply it by 200.

That's going to be something on the order of like 3 million dollars? Versus 650 million in transit funding? I propose that "illegal immigrants" is a pointless red herring with respect to this issue.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#42

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

JamilD wrote: post #39
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those thousands of daily riders camping out in line to go to the Central Valley.

Many workers in the Central Valley do commute to the Bay Area or LA. http://kvpr.org/post/two-hour-daily-commute-thousands-valley...

How would Pacheco duplicate the extant ACE?

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#43

Post by rocqua »

gumby wrote: post #14
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #4

They should've started high speed rail in the bookends, since any construction there would have immediate benefits for hundreds of thousands of riders, and instill public confidence in the project. That would've helped Caltrain electrification right there.

Well the Caltrain electrification is in one of the book ends. The logic for starting in the middle is that it created economic assistance (as a side effect) in an area with a jobs problem. Why not start that part sooner rather than later?

> The logic for starting in the middle is that it created economic assistance (as a side effect) in an area with a jobs problem. Why not start that part sooner rather than later?

This is much like the broken-window-fallacy. The reason not to start in the middle is because the middle (especially on its own) doesn't have a lot of inherent value.

Heck, if the train here (minus wages) costs more than it is worth this is a straight-up broken-window-fallacy.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#44

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

jedberg wrote: post #23
gumby wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the Caltrain electrification is in one of the book ends. The logic for starting in the middle is that it created economic assistance (as a side effect) in an area with a jobs problem. Why not start that part sooner rather than later?

Because no one will ride that section. If you start on the ends people will actually pay money to ride the train, which then funds construction on the other part of the train and provides steady jobs instead of only temporary ones. If you want to provide welfare to people without jobs, then provide welfare. Don't provide secret welfare and call it a high speed train.

Politically it would've helped the project much more to have had tangible success in the economic heart of CA, impacting shitloads of people (and voters).

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#45

Post by coredog64 »

erentz wrote: post #29

Question: the imbalance between what California contributes vs receivers from the federal government is pretty crazy to me. I'll grant some imbalances are necessary - you will always have richer and poorer areas of the country. But when he gap is as wide as it is, and then it is turned into a tool for punishing CA due to our politics, at what point should CA seek to seriously tackle this? Firstly of course is the ver…

Why is it that progressive income taxation is so awesome for everyone else and sucks when applied to you?

(FWIW, I've looked at the report that purports to back the 'CA pays more than it receives' and it isn't super accurate)

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#46

Post by davidf18 »

entee wrote: post #37
davidf18 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "By your argument, California could easily afford to pay for it if only Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Montana, and Kentucky were not "mooching" off of it." Not if the funds are paying for people living in these states legally. . Surely you see the distinction between funding people legally living in the US and those living here illegally. What I know is that if California elected responsible politicians that u…

A major flaw in your argument is the implication that undocumented individuals in CA (or the US in general) do not pay for the services they use. While in certain cases that might be true, in others they are net contributors. See social security taxes [1]. I also think you're making a fairly inflammatory argument without providing much data or grappling with the practical implications of your argument. Even if we wer…

The amount of money spent for K-12 education people who live in California illegally as well as university education and healthcare far, far exceeds the > "I also think you're making a fairly inflammatory argument..."

I don't believe I'm an inflammatory argument. Fiscally responsible politicians would not spend tax money on people who are not legally in the country except on law enforcement.

The solution to the train and other fiscal problems is simply electing fiscally responsible politicians. The newspaper article mentioned the problem of federal funding and I mentioned a levitate and proper solution. If Californians don't elect politicians who are fiscally responsible and who feel that it is OK to spend taxpayer money on people living here illegally, they only have themselves to blame.

I don't see any argument that says that the Federal gov. (again because money is fungible) should be funding people who are living in the country illegally.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#47

Post by entee »

The bay area is a bit of a mess public transportation-wise, and at least for this particular project, the cost seems not all that large in the scheme of things ($1.9B overall, need $647M in federal money). I hesitate to propose this because I fear there might be a flame war, but is there any way we could tax some of the large tech companies very slightly to quickly get enough money to make Caltrain and other public transportation systems modern and sustainable?

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#48

Post by avar »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25
iagooar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words can't express how sad I feel about people who write and believe in such a logic. Where is our humanity gone? How can you think that by helping people (legal or not) you are doing something wrong? USA is a country that has a massive problem with not accepting what it is, what it has, and what it could have. But then again, a country is made of diverse people. I feel happy that some people in California feel that…

> The poor living legally in your country ARE NOT competing for resources with "illegal aliens" you call them I am generally support immigration. But we need to remain realistic. Of course such competition exists. If an anti-poverty program for only me costs X, then that program for a million people will cost more [1]. It takes more resources, in aggregate, to maintain something for more people. That, in turn, means…

Leaving the hairy question of immigration aside, you're assuming that economic systems on the scale of nation-states are zero-sum. It's not at all clear that providing a service to one person v.s. a million people is "cheaper" on that scale, because when you're talking about a nation you also tax those million people.

You can take this logic to its extremes and assume that if you had only one very wealthy person living in the US that providing services for that one person would be cheaper. That wouldn't be the case.

Then how about if there's 100 million people? 300? 600? Generally speaking having more people should increase the economic efficiency. If you have a tax base of 600 million people that's going to give you more resources to save your piggly-wiggly turtles than if you had 100 or 300.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#49

Post by wcummings »

davidf18 wrote: post #10
davidf18 wrote: post #3

Money if fungible. California spends an enormous amount of money on illegal aliens (illegal immigrants). For example, there was an NYT op-ed piece which explained that 200 illegal aliens are allowed to attend at in-state tuition UC Berkeley. Thus, the Federal Funds noted in this article were in fact being used to fund people who are residing in this country illegally. We don't even have enough money for the poor who…

People are down voting, the but the assessment is a correct one: California citizens need to elect responsible politicians that spend money on people who live in the the US and CA legally instead of those illegally. If they elected responsible politicians that understood this, they would have their train funded. Taxes should be only spent on people living in the US legally. Not certain why people have a problem with…

They're downvoting because your argument is inflammatory, poorly informed and unpersuasive.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#50

Post by mtviewdave »

davidf18 wrote: post #3

Money if fungible. California spends an enormous amount of money on illegal aliens (illegal immigrants). For example, there was an NYT op-ed piece which explained that 200 illegal aliens are allowed to attend at in-state tuition UC Berkeley. Thus, the Federal Funds noted in this article were in fact being used to fund people who are residing in this country illegally. We don't even have enough money for the poor who…

I see that you don't say you want immigration labor laws enforced. What you say is that you don't want illegal immigrants to get benefits.

This is sadly typical. There are plenty of people here in California who are fine with using illegal immigrant labor to save money getting crops picked or construction built, but if one of these laborers slices their hand open on piece of equipment and needs to go to the emergency room, then and only then does the hand-writing about "spending money on illegals" begin.

I have no patience for this sort of sadistic, extractive capitalism. Especially when it wraps itself in a faux mantle of concern about the law. If you don't want illegal immigrants in this country, then enforce the labor laws against the employers.

What's ironic of course is that most of the 14 California congresspeople who signed the letter represent districts who are heavily dependently upon illegal immigrant labor, and thus upon the very sort of lax enforcement of immigration laws that they claim to be against. At this point, I'd be more than happy to see ICE conduct a vigorous enforcement of immigration laws throughout the Central Valley. Perhaps staring in September?

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