The US isn't France. The US is closer to the size of the EU than it is to any of its member nations and its constitution didn't envision a strong central government, and so didn't put in place the democratic apparatus needed for voters to hold a centralized administrative state at that level of government accountable.
As a result attempts to do such things at the federal level in the US fall to corruption and inefficiency in ways that don't happen to the same extent in smaller countries.
The population of Pennsylvania is larger than the population of Sweden. More people live in Minnesota than Ireland. California has about the same number of people as Canada. The things done by the governments of Sweden and Ireland and Canada were meant to be done by the governments of Pennsylvania and Minnesota and California.
But people keep trying to do them at the level of the United States Federal Government, which has grown into the world's largest bureaucracy by several metrics and regularly demonstrates its inability to operate with competence or efficiency. Comparisons to what happens in some individual EU member state do not apply, and you all are invited to not make the same mistake by attempting to do such things at the level of the EU.
And yet you have a huge government that has fought many wars, centrally controls the medical sector, the highway building, the disability program and much much more.
Factually speaking the US federal spending is comparable to that of other nations. Its larger then that of Switzerland for example.
You can't seriously argue that the federal government can't control the overall rail network, when they control the medical sector.
And then the whole point falls flat on it face, when you realize that both China and India are improving their rail sector very quickly. India a democracy even more decentralized then the US have moved to almost 100% electric freight transport and have massively upgraded their network in recent years.
The simple reality is, the way US history has played out, simply saying 'the federal government' shouldn't do X makes no sense when the reality is Minnesota will never act like Ireland in things like transportation policy. The federal government has long ago taken power, at point the federal government paid 80% of the cost of building new highways.
Even if you want more control by the states, do actually push railways forward, you need central government leadership to bring states together and start to change the approach. The states would be willing to do more if it was aligned with a federal program.
> You can't seriously argue that the federal government can't control the overall rail network, when they control the medical sector.
It's not that they can't attempt to do it, it's that they can't do it efficiently. The US has some of the highest healthcare costs in the world.
> And then the whole point falls flat on it face, when you realize that both China and India are improving their rail sector very quickly.
India's population density is 1200% that of the US. To make a rail network unprofitable with that much population density would require actual malice. It's the same reason Amtrak turns a profit in the northeast.
> Even if you want more control by the states, do actually push railways forward, you need central government leadership to bring states together and start to change the approach. The states would be willing to do more if it was aligned with a federal program.
The real problem here is the attempt to treat it like a single country, as if masses of people are going to want to take a train from Miami to San Francisco. It's too much distance, people who want to go there are going to fly.
Where trains work are mostly in the places they already are. High density metro areas like New York and DC, which already have them.
There are some that don't. Houston could use a functioning subway system. But that doesn't require federal involvement. It's even more of a matter for the city than the state. The people there apparently don't want it -- oil country and they like their cars. But they're the ones who have to sit in traffic.
> It's not that they can't attempt to do it, it's that they can't do it efficiently. The US has some of the highest healthcare costs in the world.
You’re right, the fact that America’s government-run single-payer healthcare system is so expensive is proof that the US government can’t do things efficiently. If only we let efficient private companies handle health insurance instead.
Oh wait…
> The real problem here is the attempt to treat it like a single country, as if masses of people are going to want to take a train from Miami to San Francisco. It's too much distance, people who want to go there are going to fly.
No serious person things Miami-SF is a viable high speed rail route. But the thing is, cities in the US are not evenly distributed—they are regionally clustered. Thus there are substantial regional HSR networks that do pencil out, even if the fantasy coast-to-coast ones do not.[0] The math behind this is pretty straightforward and has a lot to do with network effects which many here should be familiar with.[1][2]
> You’re right, the fact that America’s government-run single-payer healthcare system is so expensive is proof that the US government can’t do things efficiently. If only we let efficient private companies handle health insurance instead.
The claim was that the federal government does a competent job of regulating US healthcare. But US healthcare costs more than both public and private systems in any other country, so clearly they've messed it up pretty bad. And the high costs have quite a lot to do with the FDA, the tax code, the patent system, medical licensing boards and malpractice lawsuits, none of which is a private company.
> But the thing is, cities in the US are not evenly distributed—they are regionally clustered. Thus there are substantial regional HSR networks that do pencil out, even if the fantasy coast-to-coast ones do not.
Rail networks make sense in the North East Corridor or the coastal areas generally.
But meanwhile Amtrak is operating passenger rail through deserts and farmland, and overcharging passengers in other areas to do it.
That's how it starts. Then contractors or unions discover that it's a huge funding source and you get bridges to nowhere, projects that used to finish on time take longer and cost more than claimed but you can't fix it because the contractors or unions are now a large constituency, member states realize that this can be used as a mechanism to spend money collected from taxpayers of a different member state so the number and scope of the projects expands etc. etc.
As a result attempts to do such things at the federal level in the US fall to corruption and inefficiency in ways that don't happen to the same extent in smaller countries.
The population of Pennsylvania is larger than the population of Sweden. More people live in Minnesota than Ireland. California has about the same number of people as Canada. The things done by the governments of Sweden and Ireland and Canada were meant to be done by the governments of Pennsylvania and Minnesota and California.
But people keep trying to do them at the level of the United States Federal Government, which has grown into the world's largest bureaucracy by several metrics and regularly demonstrates its inability to operate with competence or efficiency. Comparisons to what happens in some individual EU member state do not apply, and you all are invited to not make the same mistake by attempting to do such things at the level of the EU.