Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

Re:Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed... by marcell on Thursday December 06, 2018 @08:42PM (#18624416)

What’s interesting to me is that the federal tax cuts passed last year cost around $150B a year. I know you may not support this either, but that would pay for the construction of 1 and a 1/2 HSR’s a year, even with the cost overrun.

Reminds me of PG’s essay about how it’s easy to loss lots of money on bad investments, even for people who are normally frugal on luxuries.

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Re:Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed... by rukittenme on Thursday December 06, 2018 @09:15PM (#18624560)

Tax rates were cut; tax revenue was not. The federal government is expecting $26 billion more in tax revenue than in 2017.

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Re:Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed... by greenburger on Friday December 07, 2018 @12:30AM (#18625379)

That may have been the estimate, but so far receipts are not keeping pace with 2017. Depending on your reference tax year revenues are 3% - 8% lower than 2017 thus far [1].

[1] http://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-bill-did-not-cause-revenue-ris...

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Re:Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed... by marcell on Thursday December 06, 2018 @09:35PM (#18624652)

That’s a bit semantics as it’s looking at just one year, and in any case doesn’t look at the delta from the old law.

Edit: IIRC the law had some incentives to onshore money at special tax rates, which may cause a one-time bump in revenues.

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