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zorionek0 t1_jdqfktz wrote

Reply to comment by Antique_Total_5473 in Keystone Worker's Agenda - a state worker rights proposal by GraffitiTavern

  1. About as much as I’m willing to pay for our bloated national defense budget.
  2. About as much as I’m willing to pay for the interstate highway system
  3. About as much as I’m willing to pay for the post office.

Some things are worth doing, cost isn’t even a factor.

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Antique_Total_5473 t1_jdqg3rp wrote

Cost is always a factor. The food we eat, the amount of gas you pump, the style of shoes you wear. Our system is unsustainable and will implode at some point. The really old people who lived through the Great Depression understand this. We don’t, we think spending trillions more than we have is sustainable.

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thenewtbaron t1_jdqhehs wrote

We had a balanced federal budget until bush decided to commit war crimes and start a decades long war in two countries that blew money we didn't have.... Did you whine about that as much?

Don't bring them into this the youngest one would be over 100 now and under 20 then... They wouldn't "know"

, the reason the great depression stayed around for as long was the lack of government intervention... In cascading problems. But hey, they needed to spend billions of dollars to help companies take over countries, they needed to whip up fake wars to spend billions on.... They knew the value of the dollar back then.

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Antique_Total_5473 t1_jdqhkzd wrote

You sound so misinformed. You can’t be this misinformed. I think your adhd drugs have rotted your ability to think outside the box.

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zorionek0 t1_jdqg9n7 wrote

Part of that unsustainability is runaway corporate profits. Compare the price of sending mail via a public good like the post office to that of UPS or FedEx.

Imagine if instead of free roadways you had to pay a toll every time you left your driveway. 75 years ago we invested in car infrastructure. Today we should invest in train infrastructure.

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Antique_Total_5473 t1_jdqhc8c wrote

Find out the forces behind what keeps us from expanding our rail network. The political contributors and lobbyists, the nimby do gooders, the competitors of rail, the regulators, etc.

Find out why commuters prefer not to use it.

Look into the rail corporations and unions.

I don’t think you have done all your homework. It’s much more complex than you seem to think.

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zorionek0 t1_jdqhoqa wrote

  1. Do really believe that having an oligopoly of 4 class-I railroads operating for profit compared to if we nationalized it and ran it as a public good would mean LESS service and expansion? The rail companies happily take record profits for declining service. The less they spend on crews and actual improvements to rail the happier their shareholders are.

  2. Because the railroads declined to install required safety infra to go above 79 mph for huge swaths of the rail network making rail uncompetitive with early regional airlines.

  3. A concerted government and business campaign to get people into cars rather than onto trains. It’s as much a policy choice as a consumer choice.

  4. Again- CORPORATIONS. I am proposing a national freight carrier (call it Amfreight) that would be responsible for doing all this without concern for profit. Unions are a good thing- the only reason they’ve been demonized is because the ownership hates having to share the fruits of labor’s labor with the actual workers.

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