another tip is that if you don't sell a product Adwords is not for you. Pure content sites will be vaporized by the cost vs the revenue you get from people seeing ads on your site :)
A lot of the political pushback in the US is two major factors:
1) Rail systems are almost never profitable. The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies. An investment in high speed rail entails paying taxes for it for many years or perhaps forever.
2) The US is much more rural than other developed countries. The land area compared to the population is huge compared to Europe/China/Japan. You almost need a car to get around because there's so much open space. Things are too far apart in many cases to make public transport realistic. Also, since nearly everyone has a car already the need for a rapid mode of transport is mostly met. Yeah it sucks in the big cities but a lot of the people that work there live far enough away that any rail system built would never reach their homes anyways.
You do see big public transport networks in places with extremely high density like New York, which has a similar density to most countries with well developed systems.
The notable exception I can think of to the trend is Russia, which has a lot of public transport compared to population density. This can probably be explained by a history of being a communist country as well as the relative lack of personal cars due to lower income and limited access to trade with countries that manufacture automobiles
Where are you getting the $420 billion per year in oil subsidies? US oil companies pay among the highest corporate income tax rates on the planet. Their taxes far exceed subsidies they receive.
$600 billion by comparison is the size of the US military and $420 billion is larger than the sales of Exxon + Chevron + Conoco + Occidental + EOG + Anadarko combined. It's an absurd claim.
> The study found that "China was the biggest subsidizer in 2013 ($1.8 trillion), followed by the United States ($0.6 trillion), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3 trillion)."
> The study found that oil, natural gas, and coal received $369 billion, $121 billion, and $104 billion (2010 dollars), respectively, or 70% of total energy subsidies over that period.
Apologies, it seems fossil fuels get 70%. Not just oil.
>A 2011 study by the consulting firm Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI)[28] estimated the total historical federal subsidies for various energy sources over the years 1950–2010. The study found that oil, natural gas, and coal received $369 billion, $121 billion, and $104 billion (2010 dollars), respectively, or 70% of total energy subsidies over that period
The cited study from the sentence I referenced in my comment:
> Estimated subsidies are $4.9 trillion worldwide in 2013 and $5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP in both years).
> In terms of countries, China had the largest absolute post-tax subsidies in 2013 ($1,844 billion or 19.5% of GDP), followed by United States ($606 billion or 3.6% of GDP), Russia ($318 billion or 15.2% of GDP), European Union ($295 billion), India ($269 billion or 14.3% of GDP), Japan ($142 billion or 2.9% of GDP), Saudi Arabia ($129 billion or 17.2% of GDP) and Iran ($118 billion or 32.2% of GDP).
I'm pretty sure you're correct and those numbers are total since 1950. However, the study does seem confusingly worded - in the footnote on page 1 it says:
"All estimates quoted are in constant 2010 dollars, unless otherwise noted, and refer to actual expenditures in the relevant fiscal year, rounded to the nearest billion"
At least to me that reads like "all estimates refer to expenditures from the relevant fiscal year only". However, they later quote the same numbers as being "total spending since 1950". Am I just missing an obvious interpretation for the footnote?
I think you are. I interpret that as the estimates for each year are quoted in 2010 dollars unless noted and that those estimates (that is, the ones for each year) refer to actuals in each of those years. Then they are summed to produce the $600b.
"from the relevant fiscal year" implies that each value relates to a corresponding fiscal year. Your addition of 'only' is redundant.
But the estimates the footnote is referring to are in the first table. Those are not per year but already summed; there's no corresponding fiscal year to refer to (I think?).
Regardless, this is a tiny point so I'll drop it. I still feel confused though :(
> Rail systems are almost never profitable. The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies.
Excuse me? Japan privatized its rail system in the late 80s, doesn't subsidize any of the JR companies[1][2] (which are all publicly traded to boot), and has a profitable enough industry that there are now numerous private operators[3] of various sizes who successfully compete.[4]
I don't know as much about China, but having been to Japan several times, I can say that the rail networks of Japan only extend to the urban cores of a city. If you want to live in a suburban or rural area, you have to get by with a car or take the local bus everywhere, which is slow. US urban rail infrastructure is already present, it just does not have the same frequency that Japanese rail has.
24/7 is in fact a negative as the state of the DC Metro and NYC system show especially in comparison to Tokyo's multiple system.
There's not enough time to do proper repairs and improvements.
What I don't understand is why more cities don't operate like Philly and operate 24 hour bus service in place of the trains at night. With a system like that the night workers can still get to work as early as others and the bar crowd can still go out with out the craziness of last train like in Tokyo.
NYC has buses covering pretty much the same routes as subway, it just takes much longer. Personally I use express buses for commute and these are amazing, though twice as expensive.
Some metro systems have a 24/7 bus system, but Philly's is an exact replacement for the trains. They don't make all the extra stops of the buses that serve similar routes. I'm unaware of anywhere else that does this
Highways (tolls) tend to be far less profitable than rail systems (ticket sales). If the US didn't like government subsidies, we wouldn't have built all these highways.
A moderate increase in user fees (gas taxes today, mileage fees in an electric future) could readily fund all capital and maintenance costs for the US interstate system. Gas wouldn't have to be that much more expensive than it was 4-5 years ago. The system would endure and could even be profitable.
No such fee structure could plausibly fund any rail system outside the NE Corridor. Prices adequate to sustain the network, let alone build it up, would put ridership into a death spiral.
Do you have a source on this? In my state the government used the tolls roads as a cash cow, they were massively profitable. The funny thing was the toll roads still sucked because they dumped all the money into the general fund to pay for everything else
