I hate to tell you this but most of the transit subsidy is paid for by the OTR trucking industry and here is how. There is a program called IFTA which stands for Interstate Fuel Taxes Agreement. That means every mile an OTR truck runs in each state is tracked and based off the average MPG run per quarter fuel taxes for each state are paid based on how many miles are run in that state. So say your a company like Prime Inc one of the Largest Reefer Carriers in the nation. Every quarter you are writing checks to each state unless you have bought enough fuel to offset to cover what you have burned in those states. I literally have heard of companies writing checks in the multiple million dollar ranges for FUEL taxes alone. They failed to buy enough fuel to cover their miles run in those states. Here is what it costs to run say 10K miles a quarter in PA per truck and that is easier to do than you think. .749 cents a gallon times 140 is right at 1070 dollars an OTR truck. Now do that times say 3K-4K trucks and see how fast your racking up the dollars and do that 4 times a year. It is pushing 70 million bucks a year in Fuel Taxes from trucks that may not even stop for fuel in the Commonwealth of PA at all.

"The world is not black and white. The options are not limited to "The Soviet Union or Somalia". The United States, for its entire history, has existed on a continuum between pure capitalism and socialism. Anyone who claims otherwise has no serious business talking about public policy or history."

Technically, we have a "mixed economy", but given that the government has mostly controlled the "means of production" through legislation, regulation, adfjudication and taxes; rather than direct ownership (Conrail and it was no accident the Staggers Act was passed after government tried to run it under ICC rules) and increasingly through a fusion of government and industry-we are most decidedly more and increasingly more fascist (as that term is loosely used) than socialist.

But this is another red herring. I never posited the existence of or advocated a completely purely free, completely unregulated market (capitalism is an ill-defined term that has lost its meaning in in its use as a pejorative by our reserve army of economic imbeciles) and as a matter of course, such a thing cannot exist, because you need to adjudicate contract disputes and enforce performance at a bare minimum. Nor did I say that the world is one of binary, mutually exclusive opposites.

Anybody who cannot address a claim without altering it, '"as no serious business talking about public policy or history."


The question is, with 135 years of federal regulation in the rear windshield, with differing philosophies and agencies-can we say that we have an effective regulatory mechanism. PTC is offered as a panacea. This was especially true after Amtrak 188, where both direction ATS should have been installed.

Even confined to The ICC era, now out of business 27 years, there are detractors right and left who agree on little, but shared criticism.]

Albro Martin would have suggested that there was manifest stupidity in legislation and regulation, I dare say.

Samuel Huntington described the ICC as being in a state of marasmus 70 years ago.

https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/ ... sequence=2

Avowed leftist Gabriel Kolko, saw it as a regulatorily captured cartelizing agency

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1821249

The sad part is that his complaint became fodder for more libertarian critics, and instead of finding common ground, he was disgusted.

Some years ago, I had the distinct pleasure of receiving from the author, Mr. Levin a copy of an address he gave to Penn State as its College of Engineering Alumni of the year. It is carefully filed in its envelope, addressed to "Superheater's Grandmother". It is a fascinating account of how regulation was made by people who generally have no knowledge of what they are regulating. My guess is that both Martin and Kolko have observations to support their positions.

I already said the railroads have a history of antagonistic employee relations. Let's be honest. Most people wash out before they can call their job, their career. But if you think some of this is completely divorced from regulatory action-especially since the passage of the RSIA, you are naive.

One thing not mentioned here is the creation of personal liability for acts done as an employee. Although I did not and cannot consider railroad employment at this point in my life, the potential to have ruinous penalties levied against me would definitely make me look elsewhere, first.

I'm not participating in this discussion further.

But to clarify, f84.0 is a code from the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, a medical classification list by the World Health Organization.

F84.0 is Autistic disorder.

"Sprinter" is an ACS-64 electric locomotive used by Amtrak and SEPTA to go where diesels cannot.

And further deponent saith not

Phil Mulligan
Over and Out

By this logic, do you think that childless couples and individuals shouldn't pay any taxes that would go towards public schools simply because they don't have kids going to said schools?

We pay to support free public schools so we don't have to live in an ignorant society... not quite the same as paying to reduce some stockbroker's monthly commuter fare.

Let's see, should I start with the snarky answer about Taj Mahal schools with Olympic pools and shrines to football and extravagant teacher pensions or should I.. or...ok, I'll do the latter

Let's stipulate, for the sake of argument that schools are educating pupils, that the taxes are fair in amount, extent and nature and that that society in general benefits from both the inculcation of knowledge and civic virtue. Now obviously I've betrayed that I don't think that is true anywhere near to the degree that it should be, but enumerating those deficiencies- that's outside the scope of this response.

If society benefits from an educated populace, then we have what is called an "externality", that is benefits that accrue to individuals who are not parties to the transaction. This has a more direct application to preservation in that operating a vintage locomotive provides photographic subject benefits to people who can't be charged for that benefit. Instead we rely on moral policing, urging people to make a donation if the operation benefited them.

Public goods were best defined by Paul Samuelson in his essay The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1925895?origin=crossref

and they have two characteristics:

Nonrivalrous and nonexcludable:

Nonrivalrous means that when one person uses a good, it is not completely consumed and unavailable for others.

Nonexcludable means that it is infeasible in some way exclude others from using a good. See the lineside photographer.

(Private consumption goods are rivalrous and excludable.)


I refer you to this Khan academy article on the topic. I sure wish I had this sort of resource when I was taking Public Finance and Monetary Theory and Policy.

https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-f ... -goods-cnx

At least in theory education is a public good and as a general rule, the public has been charged taxes to provide a no cost to student education through four years of high school.

On the other hand, mass transit, is rivalrous and excludable. Contrary to politicians looking to establish another another little isle of patronage and graft it is in fact a private consumption good. You and I cannot occupy the same seat, and the conductor or driver can limit your entrance.

I would argue that public transit is a public good, in that by taking private vehicles off the roads, it allows those remaining to travel with less delay, and not incidentally, causing less pollution and release of greenhouse gases, which benefits all of us. Also, you never know when happenstance and life is going to convert you from a private, enabled driver, to someone no longer able to drive, dependent on public transportation. Those in the handicap activist community like to refer to the rest of us as "temporarily enabled". We're all one really bad day away from joining them.

More thread drift.

For the record, Burke class destroyers are also built in Maine at Bath Iron works. Of course the Ford class carriers are built in Virginia. A number of the LCS ships were built in Wisconsin as well as Maine and the new FFG-62 class frigates will also be built in Wisconsin.

Bob

This is why I put F84.0 on my posts. But I think, in rare nod to civility and not being gratuitously and invidiously injurious to persons with a condition they have a limited ability to affect, I'm going to change that to Sheldon Cooper alert.

Sheldon Cooper Alert.

After taking the time to offer a carefully detailed and documented explanation of the attributes of a public good we get this:

"I would argue" with a persistent insistence on personal, idiosyncratic order.

Sorry, but your "argument" is wrong. The test is simple. Nonexcludable and nonrivalrous, not tendentious side benefits.

If you offered this explanation on an undergraduate economics test, you would be told that you have confused externalities with public goods. More importantly, it's a demonstration of the mechanism of thread devolution.

No, it's exactly the same thing. It's government expenditures and that money goes all over the place.
Your tax dollars pay for all kinds of stuff you'll never use or will likely ever be aware of.
Just like all the grants and tax dollars that sometimes go to railroad preservation that the majority of the public has no clue of, and they probably wouldn't approve of it if they could.
The school tax for a childless couple of a very apt analogy for this very reason.
Your taxes do go to subsidy of public transportation for people you might not like.
You don't get to make that call; neither do I.
You think government is a mess now? Imagine having to vote on how every single tax dollar gets spent, we'd still be voting and arguing about how to spend money for the New Deal in the 1930s, I'd bet.

Funny you should mention that. I just cut a check for $ 2185.40 to my local village for my annual school tax. My youngest child graduated high school in 1987 and I just celebrated my 82nd. birthday.

Seems to me that there ought to be an end to paying school taxes at some reasonable age....say 70 maybe with exceptions for men who marry much younger gals and keep procreating past the 70 mark.

My late great Uncle Emil had his last child at age 77, Aunt Tess was 32.

Ross Rowland

Congratulations on the most intellectually vacant response of the day. To call it an argument would give it credit it doesn't deserve. Essentially it's a demand to obey, be quiet and not interfere with your outsourcing of thought. Sure thing comrade. Heil whatever.

Nobody suggested plebiscite. The stench of red herring is overwhelming. The inclusion of the appeal to tradition, argument from personal incredulity and appeal to motive fallacies among others was a nice touch.

It's almost ironic that you mentioned spending money for the 1930's. Here in Pennsylvania, every bottle of liquor has a special 18% "emergency tax". It was enacted as a temporary measure after the 1936 Johnstown flood. Nobody votes on it. They just spend it, long after the disaster has been mediated.

Any relation to President Tyler?

Which only indicates that you and your ilk aren't doing your jobs within the Pennsylvania governmental bureaucracy.

Wow, imagine my shock at the latest in a never ending stream of condescension.
If you thought any of your inane posts carried any weight for me any of the other people you constantly talk down to from your imagined source of intellectual power over anyone here, you're operating on an even higher level of self importance than I thought you came with. And that's saying an awful lot.