China can but the US can't

[Political Junky]

I'm thrilled we don't get taxed out the wazoo to pay for a boondoggle like this.

Move to China if you like their priorities. Maybe your kids can make iPhones for pennies an hour too.

Why move, the wages in the US have decreased over time and continue to. It's a con wetdream.

I suppose you prefer Chinese wages.

You missed that, didn't you?

 

[Harry Dresden]

who built the HOOVER DAMN?

why is it the right always fights to keep us from doing the smart things for the future?

The Hoover dam was created out of a need for water storage and power generation.

Again, define a viable bullet train route that is worth the required investment. The NE corridor may meet that, but no one wants to contemplate the disruptions its construction would cause.

You're right - in a country only three thousand miles wide, why would anyone need to go anywhere. If we had that need we'd have magic machines in the air that could whisk me off to Chicago, and they wouldn't suck up fuel, or ever crash, or drop me off way outside of town. Obviously there's no need for that.

Where I live in Carolina if I want to take a train I have to get a ride over 100 miles just to get to one. That's pathetic. And it's not like the tracks don't exist. They're just all used for freight.

Don't get me wrong, I love to drive but have you ever lived in southern California? The SoCal transit mentality is, if your destination is three quarters of a mile away -- take the freeway. We pay the price for a national California transit mentality.

S.Cal has no need for Bullet trains.....it was set up for Cars and Buses years ago and thats the way it is......

 

[alan1]

Give them time. Like China, they are just now moving towards capitalism.

To add.....
If you think a measly 300 million US people are going to continue to maintain economic dominance over the 1.3 billion Chinese as they move towards capitalism, guess again.

They aren't moving towards capitalism, they are just making their country more friendly to foreign industry than we. Think of it as a kind of economic warfare. They don't apply the same standard to their own intrastate commerce.

They certainly are moving closer to capitalism than they were in years past. Couple that with friendly foreign industry stance and they are going to economically surpass us.

 

[alan1]

Why move, the wages in the US have decreased over time and continue to. It's a con wetdream.

I suppose you prefer Chinese wages.

You missed that, didn't you?

That you may prefer the increasing chinese wages that are still lower than American wages.
Nope, I think I got it.

 

[Harry Dresden]

Besides the Northeast corridor, where is there sufficent demand for bullet trains to justify the enourmous expense?

Nowhere. But some people subscribe to the "They have one, so we have to have one too" rationale.

Meanwhile, China is on track to surpass the the US as the number one economic power.

wait till their workers unionize.....

 

[Political Junky]

The Hoover dam was created out of a need for water storage and power generation.

Again, define a viable bullet train route that is worth the required investment. The NE corridor may meet that, but no one wants to contemplate the disruptions its construction would cause.

You're right - in a country only three thousand miles wide, why would anyone need to go anywhere. If we had that need we'd have magic machines in the air that could whisk me off to Chicago, and they wouldn't suck up fuel, or ever crash, or drop me off way outside of town. Obviously there's no need for that.

Where I live in Carolina if I want to take a train I have to get a ride over 100 miles just to get to one. That's pathetic. And it's not like the tracks don't exist. They're just all used for freight.

Don't get me wrong, I love to drive but have you ever lived in southern California? The SoCal transit mentality is, if your destination is three quarters of a mile away -- take the freeway. We pay the price for a national California transit mentality.

S.Cal has no need for Bullet trains.....it was set up for Cars and Buses years ago and thats the way it is......

It was set up by the Oil companies. LA had the Red Car system that was very efficient until oil had it destroyed.
Who Killed Roger Rabbit, had a sub-plot about that.

 

[Unkotare]

Nowhere. But some people subscribe to the "They have one, so we have to have one too" rationale.

Meanwhile, China is on track to surpass the the US as the number one economic power.

That is not the case.

China is on track to become the world's largest economy, not "the number one economic power."

Rapidly rising wages there will present a very large challenge to the boys in Beijing soon.

 

[uscitizen]

I'm thrilled we don't get taxed out the wazoo to pay for a boondoggle like this.

Move to China if you like their priorities. Maybe your kids can make iPhones for pennies an hour too.

Why move, the wages in the US have decreased over time and continue to. It's a con wetdream.

I suppose you prefer Chinese wages.

The cons do so we can compete in the global marketplace.

 

[alan1]

Why move, the wages in the US have decreased over time and continue to. It's a con wetdream.

I suppose you prefer Chinese wages.

The cons do so we can compete in the global marketplace.

Take your generic accusations and shove them up your

 

[uscitizen]

I suppose you prefer Chinese wages.

The cons do so we can compete in the global marketplace.

Take your generic accusations and shove them up your

I have not accused the Generics of anything.
They are a nice peraceful race with a great planet.

 

[Harry Dresden]

You're right - in a country only three thousand miles wide, why would anyone need to go anywhere. If we had that need we'd have magic machines in the air that could whisk me off to Chicago, and they wouldn't suck up fuel, or ever crash, or drop me off way outside of town. Obviously there's no need for that.

Where I live in Carolina if I want to take a train I have to get a ride over 100 miles just to get to one. That's pathetic. And it's not like the tracks don't exist. They're just all used for freight.

Don't get me wrong, I love to drive but have you ever lived in southern California? The SoCal transit mentality is, if your destination is three quarters of a mile away -- take the freeway. We pay the price for a national California transit mentality.

S.Cal has no need for Bullet trains.....it was set up for Cars and Buses years ago and thats the way it is......

It was set up by the Oil companies. LA had the Red Car system that was very efficient until oil had it destroyed.
Who Killed Roger Rabbit, had a sub-plot about that.

you mean back in the 1920's?.....yea when there was no people here i guess it worked great.....and oil had nothing destroyed,it was new neighborhoods going up everywhere and these new things called cars were getting more popular.....more cars and trucks on the roads which were being expanded.....finally no one was using the red line it became a money loser and went the way of things that no one uses.....

 

[RoadVirus]

Besides the Northeast corridor, where is there sufficent demand for bullet trains to justify the enourmous expense?

Nowhere. But some people subscribe to the "They have one, so we have to have one too" rationale.

Meanwhile, China is on track to surpass the the US as the number one economic power.

And we have Barack Obama to thank for that.

 

[JKVegas]

How ANYONE can compare the traveling habits of America to anywhere else on the planet is beyond me.

Of COURSE China and Europe are different. Most people in China don't even HAVE a car. And fuel in Europe is 3 times higher than it is here.

Our entire ecomony, our lifestyle, our modern American experience, was born out of personal vehicle ownership. EVERYONE in America has a car. It about the ONLY country that can say that. And that fuel isn't really much more expensive, as a percentage of your income, than it was 40 years ago. Even if it WAS, people would make concessions somewhere else.

And NO administration, no politics, no legislation, can change this.

I could take a bus to work. It would take 3 times longer and cost almost the same amount of money. Because I'd still have to have a CAR to get to the bus stop, the grocery store, the doctor, etc, etc. So why not just drive to work?

The ONLY two places I know of where car ownership is actually detrimental in the United States are NYC (the CITY, not the outlying areas) and the Peninsula in the Bay Area. EVERY other urban area is set up for automobiles.

A bullet train would work in the NorthEast corridor. That's pretty much it.

They keep talking about this high-speed train from SoCal to Vegas. Been talking about one for 25 years. Still hasn't happened. Because you'd have to DRIVE to the train station. You'd be, in some cases, almost 1/3 of the way to Vegas. Why not just drive the rest of the way? It'd actually be cheaper.

 

[Unkotare]

. Most people in China don't even HAVE a car.

Even worse, the folks who can afford to ride that new high-speed rail DO have cars.

 

[waltky]

Chinese smokin' mad at Beijing air pollution...

Beijing Smog Puts China’s Anti-Pollution Policies Under Scrutiny
January 14, 2013 - The Chinese government has announced several emergency steps to combat the worsening air pollution in the capital

Record levels of smog in Beijing in recent days have led China to acknowledge an urgent need for changes to its rapid economic growth model. The Chinese government also has taken other actions to combat the worsening air pollution in the capital in recent years. But some Chinese policies seem to have made matters worse, and others appear to lack proper enforcement. Under one emergency measure introduced on Sunday, Beijing’s environmental protection bureau suspended construction at 28 building sites around the city.

China’s official Xinhua news agency said the bureau also ordered 54 manufacturers to reduce their emissions of polluting gases by 30 percent. It said one factory operated by Beijing Hyundai Motor Company shut down completely. While such steps may help to reduce the smog in the short run, China faces a much bigger challenge in dealing with the root causes of the problem. Some of those are beyond the government’s immediate control, such as environmental conditions that trap pollutants in the atmosphere.
The current smog crisis in Beijing came about when an unusual winter weather system brought fog and light winds to the region. That combination prevented the smog from dispersing, but forecasters expect the winds to pick up by Wednesday.

Too many skyscrapers

Ping He, head of the Washington-based International Fund for China's Environment, said another problem for the Chinese capital is the density of its skyscrapers. “There is not enough space and green land between the buildings, so the trapped pollution does not have room to flow around,” he told VOA's Michael Lipin. “That definitely has some impact on the air quality in the downtown area.” Beyond the city center, the mountains around Beijing act as a barrier that contains the smog. The Chinese government has focused its anti-smog policies on the man-made causes that emit pollutants into the air.

One of the key causes is exhaust fumes from Beijing’s five million vehicles, many of them private cars, whose popularity is on the rise. Dominic Meagher, an economist with the China Policy Institute in Beijing, said authorities have tried to control the number of new cars on the streets. “Sometimes it can take up to two years to drive a new car, just because you have to go into a lottery to get a license plate,” he told VOA. “So the authorities do a lot to limit traffic.”

Too many older vehicles

See also:

Chinese media slams pollution
Tue, Jan 15, 2013 - SMOG GETS IN YOUR EYES: The ‘Global Times’ called for more transparent figures on pollution, while the ‘China Daily’ blamed the problem on the pace of urbanization

Public anger in China at dangerous levels of air pollution, which blanketed Beijing in acrid smog, spread yesterday, as state media editorials queried official transparency and the nation’s breakneck development. State media joined Internet users in calling for a re-evaluation of China’s modernization process, which has seen rapid urbanization and economic development achieved at the expense of the environment. Dense smog shrouded large swathes of northern China at the weekend, cutting visibility to 100m in some areas and forcing flight cancellations. Reports said dozens of building sites and a car factory in the capital halted work as an anti-pollution measure.

Beijing authorities said readings for PM2.5 — particles small enough to deeply penetrate the lungs — hit 993 micrograms per cubic meter at the height of the pollution, almost 40 times the WHO’s safe limit. Experts quoted by state media blamed low winds for the phenomenon, saying fog had mixed with pollutants from vehicles and factories and been trapped by mountains north and west of Beijing. Coal burning in winter was also a factor, they added. In an editorial yesterday, the state-run Global Times newspaper called for more transparent figures on pollution, urging Beijing to change its “previous method of covering up the problems and instead publish the facts.”

Officials in China have a long history of covering up environmental and other problems by not releasing information. Earlier this month a chemical spill into a river was only publicly disclosed five days after it happened, and the authorities were widely criticized for initially denying the SARS outbreak in 2003. “The choice between development and environmental protection should be made by genuinely democratic methods,” the Global Times said. “Environmental problems shouldn’t be mixed together with political problems.” The paper ran a story on differences between air quality figures given by Chinese authorities and the US embassy in Beijing. Official PM2.5 figures have only been released for China’s biggest conurbations since the beginning of last year and expanded to cover 74 cities earlier this month.

China’s tightly controlled media have previously raised concerns over health problems linked to industrialization, but observers say the increasing availability of the statistics has forced them to confront the issue more directly. An editorial in the China Daily blamed the pollution on the pace of urbanization, adding that “China’s process of industrialization has not finished.” “In the middle of a rapid urbanization process, it is urgent for China to think about how such a process can press forward without compromising the quality of urban life with an increasingly worse living environment,” it said.

The paper also called on Beijing’s 5 million car owners and government officials who use state-owned cars to rethink their driving habits and urged the government to tackle industrial pollution. Smog levels eased in the capital yesterday, with the monitoring center putting the PM2.5 reading at 400 in central Beijing, but the crisis still dominated discussion on the microblogging site Sina Weibo. “This pollution is making me so angry,” said one Web user, who also posted a picture of herself wearing a face mask.

Chinese media slams pollution - Taipei Times

 

[Oddball]

I'm not sure to be amused, relieved at the honesty, or frightened to death that the leftbats are now openly pining for America to be more like communist China.

 

[Sallow]

It's amazing what a totalitarian state can do! Just eliminating the permitting process would streamline building such a train. Imagine if we didn't have environmental protection agencies or unions or building standards. We could do it too.

Or oil and auto lobbyists fighting tooth and nail not to get such a thing, built.

 

[Sallow]

Why move, the wages in the US have decreased over time and continue to. It's a con wetdream.

I suppose you prefer Chinese wages.

The cons do so we can compete in the global marketplace.

They support lower wages for "other" people.

 

[Unkotare]

It's amazing what a totalitarian state can do! Just eliminating the permitting process would streamline building such a train. Imagine if we didn't have environmental protection agencies or unions or building standards. We could do it too.

Or oil and auto lobbyists fighting tooth and nail not to get such a thing, built.

We don't want or need such a thing, and you sure as hell wouldn't want to take China as your model in any case.

 

[Rozman]

China launches world's longest bullet train service - Telegraph

The opening of the new 2,298-kilometre (1,425-mile) line between Beijing and Guangzhou means passengers will be whisked from the capital to the southern commercial hub in just eight hours, compared with the 22 hours previously required.

They can invest our money in their infrastructure but we're still in the dark ages.

rw's should be thrilled about this.

They pay people slave wages there...
Do you honestly think we have the money to build this with having to pay union wages.
You don't have to get back to me on this one cause I already know the answer...