Actually, I find Europe's passenger service uninspiring compared to Japan or especially Taiwan.

Taiwan's trains are subsidized

So are Japan's. The idea isn't to get a profit off of tickets vs operating costs. The idea is to improve the efficiency of the country and economy. It's an investment.

If the US had a similar political climate the east coast would already have high speed rail from New York to Miami.

Rail needs to be profitable, but roads certainly don't. For some reason.

Japan has a very low subsidy and most of its railways are private and receive none.

I think that Japan's population density and relatively small size makes it much easier to make money on railways.

But they don't need to be, really, when they can just put it on a boat for the whole journey, or most of the journey and then just truck it a few hours inland.