Thomas Sowell‘s latest column posted at Human Events pans the plan to boost high-speed rail through the United States:
However little President Obama knows or cares about economics, he knows a lot about politics– and especially political rhetoric. “High-speed rail” is simply another set of lofty words to justify continued expansion of government spending. So are words like “investment in education” or “investment” in any number of other things, which serves the same political purpose.
Who cares what the realities are behind these nice-sounding words? Obama can leave that to the economists, the statisticians and the historians. His point is to win the votes of people who know little or nothing about economics, history or statistics. That includes a lot of people with expensive Ivy League degrees.
To talk glibly about spending more money on “high-speed rail” when the national debt has just passed a milestone, by exceeding the total value of our annual output, for the first time in more than half a century, is world-class chutzpa. The last time the U.S. national debt exceeded the value of our entire annual output, it was due to the cost of fighting World War II.
Want to know more about the utility of pursuing “fast” trains for North Carolina? Start with Randal O’Toole’s John Locke Foundation Policy report on high-speed rail.
