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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"] Can we presume that you are equally offended by everything else the government does that doesn't make a profit or at least break even?  We could build a tremendous passenger rail network with the money we spend on the largest military in the world, or just the money we spend supporting military bases all over the world.  I didn't even include the hundreds of billions spent beating up and occupying small countries. The government supports things that benefit our society, whether or not they make money.  Police, Fire, water systems, sewer systems, road construction and maintenance, public parks, an inexpensive postal system, environmental conservation, NASA, the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, etc.  The ability of our people to move around the country easily, comfortably, and quickly is one of those things. If you are looking for government waste to wave your tea bags at, I can find you a lot of things that are a lot more outrageous than constructing a modern passenger rail network.  [/quote] The amount society decides to spend in the public vs. private sectors is a value judgment, and whether the activity should be in the public sector or private sector is also a value judgment.  Hopefully, the efficiency and effectiveness of each option is weighed carefully, although in many if not most instances a heavy dose of emotionalism usually creeps into the equation. What the U.S. spends on its military establishment is subject to extensive debate.  Amazingly, some people even have a few intelligent things to say about it, but my experience tells me that most people outside of the military establishment or the highest reaches of the federal government are not knowledgeable regarding the appropriateness of the military spend, which by the way is roughly 4.5 per cent of GDP. What the U.S. spends on its military establishment or postal service or national parks, etc. has nothing to do with what it should spend on passenger rail.  The key question is what problem is passenger rail designed to fix?  And where would it be an optimum solution?  How rich should the solution be?  The answers to these questions should drive the decisions regarding the appropriateness of any potential spend on passenger rail. If a robust cost model is used to determine where passenger rail is a good fit, the only places that would come up positive are in those relatively few areas of the country where the cost of expanding the highway and airways systems is prohibitive.  Oh, the "inexpensive postal system" has one of the highest overhead burdens of any organization (government or otherwise) in the United States.  It has been losing money by the buckets for a long time, although it is supposed to cover its costs.  This year it will require a federal subsidy of $3.8 billion.  And this is on top of $3.4 billion that it gets each year from the federal government for services supposedly provided for it.  How these services are priced is problematic, but some analysts believe that the government payment greatly exceeds the cost of the services received and in fact is a subsidy.  The postal service has one retiree for every 1.47 active employees.  These retirees have generous retirement benefits.  It is one of the factors that are contribution to the financial problems besetting the postal service.  No business organization could sustain this ratio.  Oh, did I say it?  The post office is all too typical of many government organizations.  And it is why I don't want the government at any level to run anything that can be run by a competitive business, even it the only thing that would fit is a sole source contract.
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