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SHARMINI PERIES: Joining me now to analyze the infrastructure proposal is Michael Hudson. Michael is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He’s the author of several books, the most recent among them is J is for Junk Economics….Michael, it sounds like you had your own infrastructure failure experience last night. Tell us about it.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I was coming back from Washington from a week at Democracy Collaborative on a $400 round trip on the Acela Express, which is supposed to be the elite Amtrak. We left Washington at 3:00. At 5:30, just before we got to New York, the train stopped. The conductor said, “We were told we can’t go any further, there is a track power outage, no trains are running in and out of Penn Station.” He suggested if anyone wanted to take the Jersey tubes across the station platform, they could do that. But there was no idea when things would be restored.
So, everybody waited about five minutes. Then about half the people got off and got into the New Jersey tube train standing shoulder the shoulder. But that wasn’t moving because they had an announcement there was no electricity going in and out of New York, you can’t get there. So, I shared an Uber cab with someone who was sitting next to me to get into Manhattan.
I may add that the trip was so jiggly that it was very hard to read or to write along the whole route. That means that the idea that somehow an infrastructure plan can develop a China-style, high-speed transit is just a fantasy. In order to have high-speed transit with anything really fast, you need a dedicated roadway. While I was in Washington, the Republicans, as you know, were going to their meeting down south, and their Amtrak train crashed into a garbage truck. You can imagine that a train track that goes through crossing gate crossings wouldn’t possibly work for high-speed rail.
Also, the cost would, I think, be closer to $20 trillion just to buy the land rights along the current railroad or other route, because the land is all built up in America. There’s a law of eminent domain and there have been so many lawsuits that it’s completely infeasible to rebuild the railroads.
full: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/14/trump-privatizes-america/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
