High Speed Rail ... Fail

Maybe I'm just dense, but let's look at this map of high-speed rail tracks designated under the stimulus:



So, you can get from Kansas City to Cincinnati (through StL) and from Pittsburgh to Montreal (through NYC), but since there's no Cincy-Pitt connection, you couldn't get between those two networks?

Would it have been that hard to connect Tulsa and KC? Orlando and Jacksonville? Houston to Austin?

OK, I've decided. I'm missing something really obvious and I'm going to feel really stupid when you tell me what it is. Maybe HSR isn't for long-distance travel? I don't see why not, but Missourians aren't experts on mass transit ...

Story

Dreams From My Campaign

God I'm tired of this crap. I was hoping for some change. Maybe next time we could get this guy to run for president:

Articles!

A quick article dump to start the day’s blogging activities.

”Sarah Palin's $159,050 Conflict of Interest” - Todd Palin is currently racing a “snow machine” 1,971 miles across Alaska, during which his “Arctic Cat's powerful two-stroke engine will emit the same amount of hydrocarbons as an automobile driving from Chicago to San Francisco and back 150 times.” Fantastic. And it only gets trashier and more polluting. First, the pollution: “[During the race] Todd Palin will release as many cancer-causing and smog-forming pollutants as a Chevy Malibu driven around the Earth at its equator 28 times.” Now, the conflict of interest: the race is sponsored by “[…] the petroleum giants Tesoro and Conoco-Phillips; State Farm, Wells Fargo, Frontier Airlines, Alaska Airlines and the Alaska First National Bank.” You may be saying, “But you are not being fair. Maybe the Palins do not get a shady benefit from this.” Well, Todd is an annual competitor (seemingly surprising for a race with a field of 40 people willing to do this kind of evil to the environment) who has only one four times. “Once after Sarah was elected to the Wasilla City Council, once after she was elected mayor, the year she was appointed to the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission, and the year she was elected governor.” Okay, okay, maybe I jumped the gun. Sorry for trying to shame such an upstanding family.

“Video Games Are Good For Children – EU Report” - Nothing too surprising here, but it is nice to have confirmation of something I believe: An EU panel determined that "’video games can stimulate learning of facts and skills such as strategic thinking, creativity, cooperation and innovative thinking, which are important skills in the information society.’" Yay! An excuse to play more video games!

Unemployment as stimulus -
“A Novel Approach: Using Unemployment Benefits as a Means for Stimulus” – An interesting plan to maximize the benefits created by unemployment payments: instead of paying out cash to an unemployed person for a set amount of time provide that person with a voucher that subsidizes them as an employee. For example, assume Mr. Doe is unemployed and receives $200 each week in unemployment payments ant that were anyone to hire Mr. Doe it would cost that firm $500 each week, a (made-up) prohibitive amount. The likely outcome here is that he remains unemployed. But if Mr. Doe can suddenly walk into an interview and say, “Instead of costing you $500 each week I will only cost you $300 each week and the money that would have been my unemployment check is now paying the other $200 of the salary.” Obviously this has limitations (e.g. what happens when Mr. Doe’s salary is no longer subsidized?), but in the short term this plan creates a greater overall income, implying a greater overall level of consumption, for the same government investment. At the same time it increases the overall production level of the economy.

“Big Satellites Collide 500 Miles Over Siberia” – This story seems pretty ridiculous at first, though it does highlight the very real concern of the volume of junk orbiting Earth. Apparently a non-functional Russian satellite launched in 1993 and described as “[…] out of control” crashed into a commercial satellite launched in 1997, creating thousands of particles that will now orbit Earth waiting to smash into other man-made satellites. I can’t help but think of this as a case of modern space zombies in which each zombie (read: smashed satellite) spends the rest of its time trying to create more zombies (read: smash other satellites). For perspective on the dangers we are facing from orbiting junk only fifty-two years into man’s era of sending crap into space: “[…] orbital debris is now the biggest threat to a space shuttle in flight, surpassing the dangers of liftoff and return to Earth.” I will now officially swear off space flight until we have orbiting Roombas keeping me safe.

“Letting Scientists Off the Leash” - This is an interesting article written by a researcher at Stanford University who discusses the flaws in the way money for research is distributed. His main point is that the typically conservative review boards that approve funding for grant proposals do not fund very imaginative or risky research. This leads to a situation where most of the ideas we are pursuing are those that we are already sure we can turn into a profit, not those that could have a substantially larger impact but at the same time carry larger risks (in that they are more likely than the boring projects to have an outcome different from that discussed when the grant was proposed). I don’t know too much about this, but I do support the idea of devising a more efficient means of identifying and funding riskier and more creative research.

SAT Time!

Bush : PATRIOT Act :: Obama : Stimulus Bill

I'm becoming more and more convinced that external circumstances allowed both men to pass measures reflective of the more extreme side of their ideology under blankets of fear and urgency, bills that would have had no chance of passing in more normal times.

I'm not saying everyone's gonna be with me on this one, but I've decided that's my view.

FYI- The President wrote an article

That's right, we have confirmation that not only can Barack Obama speak, he can also write, an ability that is as yet unconfirmed in our previous commander-in-chief.

Morning Thoughts

I strongly disagree with the President's decision to cap executive pay at $500K for (some) bailout recipients. I certainly think he has the right - you want our money, we make the rules - but I think something like $5 million would have been fine. Like it or not, some of these "executives" are not actually spawn of Satan and some of them are very talented. Why would they work for $500K if they could get $10M elsewhere? Especially if they, say, have taken out a mortgage based on future expectations of salary. And I'll just say it - if you're a powerful, wealthy person living in New York City, $500K is not a lot of money.

So, it's clearly written from the perspective of a whiner, but this article about Obama capping total compensation at $500K when his total compensation is quite a bit higher was actually worth reading.

Glenn Beck is willing to go all-in on Obama being a Communist. The last 15 seconds are classic.

Tim Geithner did know he owed the other half of the Social Security and Medicare taxes (if you don't know, US employers pay half of these taxes and you pay the other half. Americans working for int'l organizations are still on the hook for the whole thing even though their employer won't pay it. Geither claims that missing this was the mistake in question). How do we know he knew? He applied - and received - reimbursement for the taxes from the IMF. He later acknowledged a failure to pay the taxes, but didn't actually pay them until his nomination was dicussed. It's all right here in this brochure. (For the record, I don't put a lot into the "rough estimate of $600B" that the article mentions.)

PS - As I was labeling this post, it just made me realize - I want to make it clear that I know I've switched from using "bailout" to using "stimulus", even though the media's switch was arbitrary/socialist.

PPS - I know I've been a little overboard about this recently, but I stand by my "incorrect" ordering of quotation marks and commas above. I used to refer to the "Government Bailout" but I've never referred to the "Stimulus, Package" so I see no reason to put the comma inside the quotation mark.

PPPS - In the first paragraph I said $500K isn't a lot of money for wealthy, powerful New Yorkers. But it's really not a whole lot of money for anyone. Think of it this way, New Yorkers - the proportion of my income that goes to rent is 5.5% before taxes and 7.4% after taxes. Divide your rent by those numbers to see what your income would be if your rent was the same as it is now but it only took the same amount of your income as mine does. My figures do not include utilities.

Where is the Stimulus Money Going?

I wanted to know, and Obama's only competition for God-on-Earth (Wikipedia) came to the rescue.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Two Thoughts on the Economy

1. For reasons unknown, I have begun to read Rush Limbaugh's stimulus proposal. I haven't gotten far, but in the beginning he sets up a sharp contrast between the "Keynesian" (i.e., Democratic) solution of funding "shovel-ready" projects and the "supply-side" (Republican) solution of tax cuts.

My knowledge of economics puts me in a better place to discuss the Republicans' proposal than the Democrats'. Tax cuts will stimulate the economy to some degree - the more progressive the tax cut, the more short-term relief is brought about. This is because poor people spend the highest percentage of their income, while wealthier people tend to save/invest it. So tax cuts to middle- and upper- class folks will largely be saved, or used to pay down individuals' debts.

So my question is - assuming (and I think I can do so safely) that the average American currently has ballooning debt, is it possible that the tax cut route might actually be better, in that private debts (mortgages, credit cards) could represent a coming crisis that needs to be averted now? Just a thought.

(And I should add, it's entirely possibly that such a proposal wouldn't actually result in Americans making a net payment on their debt, or at least the right Americans paying down the right debts.)

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2. This second thought it much more political than economic, but it's something to watch for: the Republicans need to carve out a voice ASAP if they want a shot at the 2010 elections. So they're going to have to find ways to oppose the Democrats. Thus far, they haven't had a lot of luck.

But with the economy being the number one issue, here's an argument you're going to hear more and more as election day comes ...

Let's say you're God. Let's say unemployment is currently 8%. Let's say without action, it will be 14%, with the Republicans' stimulus it will be 12%, and with Obama's stimulus it will be 10%.

So the Democrats say, "Wow, look at that, we saved a whole lot of jobs!"
So the Republicans say, "Wow, look at that, they didn't create any jobs. In fact, they lost jobs!"

I guess it would have been a whole lot easier for me to say "There's going to be an upcoming argument about jobs saved vs. jobs created." Oh well, you get the point.