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I agree that the U.S. has a national transportation policy.  It is built around cars and airplanes.  And it works better than many people think. The U.S. should promote passenger trains in high density corridors where they make sense, i.e. there is a market for them.  Do they need to be high speed corridors.  Not necessarily.  They need to be better, in many instances, than what they are now, but they don't necessarily have to be high speed, i.e. TGV to attract customers. Californians should rank order their priorities and determine whether they can afford high speed rail.  Hopefully, when they went to the polls, they kept the following in mind. The U.S. National Debt is $10.5 trillion.  But this is only the tip of the debt iceberg.  When mortgage, consumer, credit card, state and local and corporate debt is added to the mix, the total comes to nearly $40 trillion.  This is what Americans owed as of October 31, 2008.  But there is more.  Unfunded liabilities, i.e. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Federal Pensions take the number to $86.9 trillion.  These are big numbers.  What do they say to us as individuals? The numbers can be sliced and diced in a variety of ways.  But here are several examples that should hit home.  The debt before unfunded liabilities works out to be $181,781 for every person over age 20 in the U.S.  It is $194,765 for every taxpayer, i.e. those who file a federal income tax return.  It is even higher when one considers that 41.3 per cent of those filing a federal tax return pay no federal income taxes due to deductions and credits.  When the unfunded liabilities are added to the burden per taxpayer, the number rises to $640,482.  The debt before unfunded liabilities is accounting data.  It is real time.  The unfunded liabilities, of course, are best estimates.  They are arguable.  And they are subject to a variety of changing forces.  Nevertheless, they speak to a serious problem.  How much debt can the U.S. afford?  And how much are we willing to pass on to future generations? I wonder how many of the people who advocate spending government monies on high speed rail have considered the debt structure of the U.S.?
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