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The main reason why much of the public opposes HSR is the objection to the fact that HSR must be subsidized with public funds.  HSR proponents will then always counter that highways are subsidized, or even that everything is subsidized.  By using a highly elastic definition of subsidy, they can prove that virtually everything the government spends money on is a subsidy to the recipient.  Therefore, they conclude that if everything is subsidized, it is okay to subsidize any new thing, and that means it is okay to subsidize HSR no matter what it costs.  But to compare apples to apples, there needs to be the following: <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> 1)      A definition of subsidy. 2)      A measurement and quantification of the subsidy. 3)      An explanation of who pays the subsidy and who benefits from it.   <o:p></o:p> Even the definition of the term, subsidy is subject to individual interpretation.  To some extent a subsidy might simply be the government directing the public’s money to a public good.   One could therefore argue that that’s a direct purchase by the public, mandated by government.  In those terms, the subsidy would not even be a subsidy.   <o:p></o:p> Here is another way of looking at it:   <o:p></o:p> Government has the authority to tax at whatever amount it chooses.  So the government could tax income at 100% if it wanted to.  Then if you earned a dollar, government would take the whole dollar as tax.  If instead, they set the tax at 50%, and because they could take 100%, does that mean that government is giving you a 50-cent subsidy on each dollar you earn if they tax it at 50%?  That is believed to be the case by those who consider corporate tax breaks to be government subsidies to those corporations.  <o:p></o:p> Because the term subsidy means so many different things, I believe that it should be set aside for purposes of HSR funding discussion.  The far more important issue is item #2, and especially item #3 above.  Whether we call it a subsidy or not is beside the point.  Ultimately, it is not the government doing the funding of these public projects, but rather, the government forcing private citizens to do the funding.  So the more those citizens find the funded work useful, the more fair the deal will be for them.   <o:p></o:p> While both highway and HSR funding might be called subsidies, there are many times more highway users in the group doing the funding of highways than there will be HSR users in the group doing the funding of HSR.  That is the difference.
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