As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail

Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by adventured on Saturday July 01, 2017 @08:04PM (#14679873)

There's nowhere you're going to get $500 billion per year for anything. Entitlement costs are skyrocketing and are going to accelerate, we can't even afford how much SS / Medicare / Medicaid are going to cost in the next 20 years as is, much less find $500 billion in new spending. If the funding source is to be cutting the US military from $600x billion to $100x billion, that isn't even worthy of a serious discussion (if we slashed it in half to $300x billion - which might be the absolute minimum we need to maintain a standing capable army (it'd be about 1.5% of GDP equivalent a few years out) - that half might plug the entitlement hole in the coming decades, that's it).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by Retric on Saturday July 01, 2017 @08:12PM (#14679907)

If you build a house you take out a loan. The same is generally true of rail networks.

As I said in another comment we could slash Medicare spending by 40+% without reduicing care. But, as you did not bother to read my comment I can't help but think your being disingenuous.

PS: I don't run the country so any change I or you suggest has the same problem of never going to be implemented. Stopping rational discussion at that point kills all political discussions period.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by adventured on Saturday July 01, 2017 @08:24PM (#14679966)

> As I said in another comment we could slash Medicare spending by 40+% without reduicing care.

Concluding disingenuous is more than a stretch. I'm reading & responding to more than a dozen posts in this same thread.

Claiming we could reduce Medicare spending by 40% is a very, very dramatic claim. We could reduce general healthcare spending by a similar amount: the consequences of doing so are profound, involving vast job loss, pay cuts, and tax base loss. What's your near-term fix for that immense dislocation that would take decades to play out? Just tell the millions of people that will be negatively affected by it to suck it up and deal with it? Or do you plan to significantly boost welfare programs, unemployment benefits, retraining spending, etc. - and how do you plan to pay for that (cutting Medicare spending by 40% wouldn't even balance the budget deficit, which is set to balloon massively due to entitlement costs)?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by isostatic on Sunday July 02, 2017 @05:39AM (#14681712)

Your government funded health care budget alone would be enough to pay for a free-at-the-point-of-use system for the entire population like the UK.

Yes, all the inefficiencies would have to go, and that would mean people would have to get jobs that are more efficient and produce more bang for buck. That's life.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by makomk on Sunday July 02, 2017 @01:43PM (#14683487)

Maybe if the entire population was like the UK this might work - Americans are rather less healthy in general - and one of the "inefficiencies" the UK system does away with is paying for treatments that offer particularly bad value for money, so you'd have to tell a bunch of cancer patients that tough, they're not getting chemo, now go and die quietly, and even then it's not clear whether UK levels of cost efficiency are even possible in the US.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by isostatic on Sunday July 02, 2017 @06:59PM (#14684751)

NICE is no different to insurance companies when it comes to hiding the value of a given drug. For cancer patients not given chemo, you're thinking of the US when your credit card bounces and you get dragged out of hospital.

I'm not aware of any cases when people are denied chaemotheropy on the NHS, yet I am aware of people in the Us struggling to pay $50k a year for something as basic as insulin.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by Retric on Saturday July 01, 2017 @08:37PM (#14680027)

The disingenuous was in reference to the 500 billion, number provided. when you consider the leverage loans can provide it's closer to 500B per year.

[ Parent | on HN ]