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Reason Alert January 28, 2011
- State of the Union: We Can’t Win the Future By Repeating the Past
- President Obama, China, and High-Speed Rail
- Education and the State of the Union
State of the Union: We
Can’t Win the Future By Repeating the Past
Reason's Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy write, "Rebranding
unrestrained spending as investment may be smart politics, but the
effect on the nation’s balance sheet is unmistakable. Using 2010
numbers, the government is at or near post-World War II highs in terms
of spending (about 25 percent of GDP) and debt (over 64 percent). What
started under Bush has been put on a fast track to fiscal oblivion by
Obama. While the president’s acknowledgement of the need for 'reducing
the deficit' and call to freeze 'annual domestic spending for the next
five years' are welcome, his rhetoric and action since taking office
make it clear that he is uninterested in running a 'government that
lives within its means' and promoting an 'economy that’s driven by new
skills and ideas.'...Under the stimulus, we committed hundreds of
billions of dollars to “shovel-ready projects” that were supposedly
desperately needed by states and localities and would provide tinder to
fuel an economic recovery. That didn’t work because publicly funded
projects are driven by politics not demonstrated need. Obama should
look at the way that state and local governments have tapped
private-sector funds to build and increase transportation capacity."
Nick Gillespie: Obama's Speech Was a Failure
Matt Welch: We Don't Do Big Things
Michael Moynihan: Forget the "Sputnik Moment," Let's Have a "Carter
Moment"
John Stossel: My State of the Union Address
Steve Chapman: The Trouble with Obama's State of the Union
Grading President Obama With Libertarian Legal Scholar Richard Epstein
President Obama, China,
and High-Speed Rail
Reason Foundation's Sam Staley writes, "How relevant are China’s
investments in infrastructure to the challenges of U.S. economic
competitiveness? Unfortunately, if China’s commitment to high-speed
rail is a benchmark for the kind of commitment President Obama believes
the U.S. must make to remain competitive, we may be learning the wrong
lessons. First, China’s transportation spending is very specific to its
circumstances and its investment in high-speed rail should not be seen
as independent of its need to develop a comprehensive transportation
network. China eclipsed Japan last year to become the world’s second
largest economy, but this achievement is not as significant as it might
appear. China’s per capita income (adjusted for purchasing power) still
ranks 93rd worldwide according to the International Monetary Fund.
China’s economic development is about the same level as the United
States was back in the 1920s. And China’s Gross Domestic Product per
person is only about 16 percent of that of the US...In the U.S. rail
advocates envision the trains replacing cars and planes. Meanwhile,
China’s investment in rail is not seen purely as a substitute for other
means of traveling between cities and provinces...In 2008, U.S.
airplanes logged 583 billion passenger miles. The entire Amtrak system
accounted for just 6 billion passenger miles. Even if high-speed rail
were to double the number of riders, its market share would be paltry
compared to air travel. Thus, the prospects for high-speed rail to
compete effectively for a meaningful level of travelers in the U.S.,
unlike China, is fundamentally limited, a conclusion implied in the
massive ongoing subsidies required to simply keep the U.S. train
systems operating once they are built."
Staley: Rail Too Risky for Taxpayers
Taxpayers Would be on the Hook for Florida Rail
Florida Taxpayers Ultimately Responsible for Extra High-Speed Rail Costs
Education and the State of
the Union
Reason magazine's Katherin Mangu-Ward: "The president’s primary boast
about K-12 education was that 'instead of just pouring money into a
system that’s not working, we launched a competition called Race to the
Top.' It would have been far more accurate to say: 'In addition to
pouring money into a system that’s not working, we launched a
competition called Race to the Top.' At $4.35 billion, Race to the Top
spending barely touched the $500 billion spent on education at the
federal, state, and local level. But by refusing to give states the
money until after they actually made changes to the way they do
business, Race to the Top did elicit a pretty big bang for the buck.
The president said that 'for less than 1 percent of what we spend on
education each year, it has led over 40 states to raise their standards
for teaching and learning.'...Obama got one thing right, though, at
least on the federal level: 'Race to the Top is the most meaningful
reform of our public schools in a generation.' And that’s the
most depressing part. A program that doled out a measly $4 billion in
chunks ranging from $75 million to $700 million probably is the biggest
step we have taken toward school reform in a couple of decades. And
it’s not much."
Inflating Higher Education Spending
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