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A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

nytimes.com

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Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#61

Post by hueving »

rocqua wrote: post #43
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?

> 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…

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

Not really. Lots of projects can start out in the red and then provide more value longer-term. This is particularly true when talking about improving transit to impoverished areas.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#62

Post by nitwit005 »

coredog64 wrote: post #45
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)

If your country is large enough, you probably need to adjust for cost of living for a progressive taxation system to be fair.

Although I suspect much of this effect is explained by the fact that states get fixed senate votes regardless of population.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#63

Post by masonic »

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…

  the imbalance between what California contributes vs receivers
Do you have a firsthand source for that, or are you just quoting unsupported media quotes? The one study on that topic that I've seen omitted a lot of Federal spending in CA, such as transfer payments, military personnel, CA's share of defense spending, etc.

Remember that CA has had a lot of power in Congress under Democrats, including two senior Senators and the Speaker of the House twice.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#64

Post by hueving »

iagooar wrote: post #12
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…

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…

>I find it absurd to even consider a person, a HUMAN BEING, to be illegal

I don't understand this. What would you propose as a replacement term for people here illegally? The term 'undocumented resident' just seems like handwaving to avoid the fact that these people are violating the law. If we can't use the word 'illegal' to describe violations of the law, then things become silly (e.g. "undocumented bank withdrawal").

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#65

Post by masonic »

Only a small amount of that $647 million was going to Caltrain electrification. It was wrapped in a boondoggle of an omnibus transit spending bill. The real political battle here is to limit Federal spending on CA's ill-routed HSR.

The Democrats are free to introduce a clean bill with just the Caltrain electrification funds. A clean bill (funding ALL of it, even) would sail through Congress.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#66

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

dragonwriter wrote: post #60
jedberg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If you start on the ends people will actually pay money to ride the train The initial operating segment runs through the Valley to San Jose; that's pretty close to the S.F. end , and is the third biggest city in California (and the second biggest covered by the whole Phase 1 LA-to-SF alignment.) Obviously, the initial operating segment isn't going to connect both ends, and short of doing that, where specifically wo…

Have they even started on Pacheco yet? All this talk about San Jose to the navel of the world in the CV is hot air without it.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#67

Post by jedberg »

dragonwriter wrote: post #60
jedberg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If you start on the ends people will actually pay money to ride the train The initial operating segment runs through the Valley to San Jose; that's pretty close to the S.F. end , and is the third biggest city in California (and the second biggest covered by the whole Phase 1 LA-to-SF alignment.) Obviously, the initial operating segment isn't going to connect both ends, and short of doing that, where specifically wo…

The initial plan was to go from Stockton to Fresno. They only extended it to San Jose when people complained about how useless that would be.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#68

Post by jedberg »

dragonwriter wrote: post #40
jedberg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. The train is a huge boondoggle, mostly because they are building it backwards. Building the middle part where no one lives is easier and will make a lot of jobs in a lot of poor areas, but then it is just a secret welfare program, not a useful piece of infrastructure. Let's just provide welfare if that's the goal, and then build some useful infrastructure like electrified tracks in the Bay Area and bullet train…

> Building the middle part where no one lives is easier and will make a lot of jobs in a lot of poor areas The planned initial operating segment has one endpoint in the third largest city in the state, and passes through the fifth largest city in the state, so the idea that it's in a place where no one lives is, well, what recently has become known as an "alternative fact".

Actually you're the one pedaling in alternative facts. The initial operating segment was going to be Stockton to Fresno until people complained about how stupid that was, and then they added San Jose.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#69

Post by avar »

davidf18 wrote: post #54
avar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 livi…

> "Leaving the hairy question of immigration aside..." I am all for legal immigration. Your comment might be correctly phrased as "leaving the hairy question of illegal immigration aside..." > "you're assuming that economic systems on the scale of nation-states are zero-sum." I'm not assuming that at all. I'm simply making a statement that California taxpayer funds (and since money is fungible) and federal funds are…

    > Your comment might be correctly phrased as "leaving
    > the hairy  question of illegal immigration aside..."
No, it really couldn't. I'm replying to your economic fallacy of asserting that "[a] program for a million people will cost more [than a program for one person]". Of course that's literally true in terms of absolute dollar amounts, but it's not true in the sense that actually matters. I.e. if you had a million extra people in your country would they be a net drain on your economy, or net contributors?

To answer that question it doesn't matter that they're illegal immigrants or legal immigrants. You can't assume that just because someone's illegal they're more likely to be a net drain on the economy, actually the reverse is probably likelier to be true, since an illegal immigrant will seek work but can't make use of social services provided to people legally in the country.

    > I'm not assuming that [illegal immigrants are a
    > net drain on the economy] at all.
I really hate to put words into someone's mouth, but the most generous reading of what you're saying really does sound like that's what you're actually saying.

You're asserting that having X number of "illegal" immigrants is going to have some linear drain on the economy as a function of X, it's not at all clear that that relationship exists in any sense, i.e. it could be a gain not a drain, and it could be non-linear.

Re: A Silicon Valley Train Gets Stuck

#70

Post by masonic »

iagooar wrote: post #12
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…

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…

  I find it absurd to even consider a person, a HUMAN BEING, to be illegal
It's not about a person "being illegal"; it's about a person doing illegal deeds.

For example: a storefront "doctor" with no license does cosmetic surgery procedures in a back room. Do you call him an "undocumented plastic surgeon"?

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