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[quote user="YoHo1975"] [quote user="Bucyrus"] If those land grants generated more return to the government than it cost them, then they absolutely were NOT a subsidy.  Just because they were grants, does not mean they were subsidies.  [/quote]   Ignoring for the minute that there is a question on the table that the government made their money back at all (or rather, made it back in a timely manner) I DEFY you to find a valid recognized definition of the word subsidy that agrees with what I quoted here.[/quote]     I have already read several definitions of subsidy as we have been discussing it, and your protesting my last comments does lead me to give the definition some more thought.  I guess that if a government grants anything of value to anyone, it amounts to a subsidy.  So you are right that a land grant has to be a subsidy.  However, one might question whether a land grant is really a grant if there are strings attached.  I guess it depends on the value of the strings in relation to the size of the grant.   <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> But what if the subsidy is paid back?  In that case, the subsidy would be cancelled.  The recipient would no longer be operating under the subsidy.  If the subsidy were paid back, it would be accurate to say that the recipient is not subsidized after the payback.  But, nevertheless, it would be accurate to say that the recipient had been subsidized, even if only for a moment.   <o:p></o:p> So I conclude that the term, subsidy, although basically definable, is meaningless unless placed into the context of its actual specific application.   <o:p></o:p> But why are we discussing subsidies here?  I assume it goes back to your apparent contention that it is okay to subsidize HSR because government subsidizes nearly everything going all the way back to the land grants.  However, as I mentioned in post #4, page #5 of this thread, comparing things that can be called subsidies often amounts to comparing apples to oranges.  To get some degree of a meaningful comparison, we need the following criteria: <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.
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