Quote:
Originally Posted by StillwaterTownie
People in Oklahoma don't want better infrastructure. Instead, they want better funded education after Republicans cut it to the bone. So tax on gas was raised 3 cents a gallon for education rather than to fix streets and highways. To me, it's a major symptom of one the most poorly run Republican states in the union.
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Public funded "edjukashun" is a disaster. There is an inverse relationship between spending and SAT test scores. Part of the reason is federal meddling and increased bureaucracy.
Back in the 1960s, I attended a Parochial school that was "poor" and had only 4 teachers for 8 grades. And the principal was a teacher. NO bureaucracy. But it was common knowledge that when anyone transferred to Public school, their letter grade went up by one or two, due to the lax standards.
In fact, "C" students became "B" students, "B" students became "A" students, and the "A" students went crazy with boredom. (I am not kidding. In one class, "World cultures", the predominant student body was shop class students. My friend and I played chess for most of the year, left alone by the teacher. We got "A"s on the test so he didn't mind.)
You can check out the home schooling movement ("Growing without Schooling") for some nasty stories of
better funded public education.
INFRASTRUCTURE
There is one major impediment to resolving the problem - the public subsidy of waste and penalty on frugality. Obviously, when you consume more for less, fewer people benefit.
Based on the law of physics, steel wheel on steel rail (railroad) has the lowest coefficient of rolling resistance, and consumes 95% LESS energy to move cargo than a pneumatic tire on pavement. And yet after all the meddling people are left with the belief that railroads are MORE expensive. If you want to research all the details, they're available on Wikipedia (see: amtrak), and elsewhere. Bottom line, the automobile / petroleum / pavement hegemony dominates politics and their cut of the pie is threatened by any rail project, especially urban electric traction rail. That's why the government funded projects often are boondoggles, wasteful, and don't quite meet the needs of the people. (Wink, wink, nod, nod).
If you want to see how fast Americans can 'fix' things, just consider that between 1890-1910, privately funded electric traction rail companies built over 35,000 miles of new urban and interurban tracks (by hand labor no less), built the earliest power plants, funded electric trolley parks, and a host of side businesses.
Now? California is dithering over 21 years to build a single line of HSR, 380 miles long...approved by voters in 2008, and delayed initial service to 2029, with Los Angeles to San Francisco service in 2033... using the latest in rail laying machinery!
But when you have government taxing 44% of the GDP, who else has the capital?
Frankly, if you had zero taxes on all labor and business, and users paid all the costs, America would flip around in a New York minute. Because the cheapest way to move passengers and cargo is by electric traction rail.
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