“Unemployment Checks Fastest Way to Create Jobs”

A certain Senator from California alluded that the fastest way to create jobs is sending out more unemployment checks. I fail to see how this in any way is going to create jobs quickly or at all. If anything it prevents draining additional money out of the economy, but that’s not creating jobs that’s preserving jobs. If you are unemployed that’s a big difference because you’ll still be unemployed and without a job.

There are actions Congress can take that would create lots of jobs. Here’s a list of things Congress could do to create a bounty of jobs, in no particular order:

• Temporarily disallow local, State and Federal laws that prohibit or limit the selling of items on the street. Have you seen apple sellers on street corners? While not successful in creating long term jobs the International Apple Shippers Association did provide temporary relief for some during the Great Depression.
• Make it free to incorporate a business, let people easily create their own job.
• If jobs are important the Federal minimum wage rate can be temporarily reduced.
• Federal environmental laws can be temporarily relaxed or the Government can hire more workers to process the permits. How about taking the permitting process from a 6 to 9 months to a week? Think of how many projects could have been started in the past year, creating jobs. I know I’m currently working on projects that are going to be delayed because of this, and this delays jobs being created.
• After working with the Davis Bacon wage rates, they could be slashed in half. Doing so would increase the number of Federal and State projects that could be constructed increasing the number of jobs available.
• Turn back on the pumps at the Sacramento Delta to nearly instantly create jobs on the West side of California’s Central Valley.
• Create actual jobs and resurrect the CCC, CWA, NRA, TVA, REA and CWA. While the original programs can’t be called a total success, they did provide jobs and more benefit to society then handing out $64 billion to people to sit around and gripe about being unemployed.

These are just a few ideas on how to actually create jobs. Sadly I don’t think any of these would be on the Senator’s list. I guess it’s not really about creating jobs, but to make sure she’s able to purchase votes for the next election.

If You Build it They Will Come

This weekend I took a variety of transportation methods to travel from San Luis Obispo, CA to Boston, MA. I drove my car from my house to the Grover Beach Train Station. From there I took the Pacific Surfliner to Union Station in Los Angeles where I took the FlyAway bus shuttle to the Los Angeles International Airport. After a long layover I departed on a commercial jet plane to Boston, MA. Once in Boston I walked to the light rail system and walked to the hotel.

California, along with some other states, are planning on building High Speed Rail (HSR) lines. While I can see the HSR rail working in more populous states I’m failing to see it succeeding here in California financially and ridership wise.

Financially it appears to be a looming disaster. At an estimated cost of $42 Billion it’s hard to imagine ridership fares even coming close to covering that cost let alone the costs of operations. Currently the project does not have nearly enough funds to cover the costs of right-of-way acquisition, environmental blackmail fees, design, and construction. I can’t see the project can’t viably being built in phases. The proposed path winds it’s way up the Central Valley of California. If you have ever driven it you’ll find a lot of farm land sprinkled with small cities and medium sized cities of Bakersfield and Fresno. Not sure about you, but I’ve never found Bakersfield or Fresno hot destinations from people in Northern or Southern California.

The future ridership appears based on if you build it they will come. Except California already has a rail system that travels from there to there and is currently subsidized by the California Department of Transportation. People in large numbers aren’t traveling by train. After traveling a portion of it I can say lack of alignment improvements and lack of double tracks cause most of the delays. Portions of the trip are downright slow and any short mechanical delay can turn into a longer period because of the single track in places. It seems to me if California wants faster rail it should spend the money improving the system they already have rather than building an expensive HSR route through the Central Valley that appears to be a looming financial disaster. But then again the legislature appears to love them so I guess we'll get to pay higher taxes to pay for it. And this includes you in the other 47 states.

Project Recognition

When are project recognition plaques appropriate? I get people want credit, but does every project need them? While usually a small cost in relation to project costs, having recognition signs do add up to big money.

Maybe some signs, required by law, may violate the spirit of election laws. For instance in the State of ‘budget challenged’ California voters are often asked to vote on bond measures. Once in place government agencies receiving funds are required to put up signs indicating which bond measure provided funds to construct the improvements. It seems to me this is a political message so the next time a similar type bond message comes up you’ll be sure to vote for it. Definitely has the appearance of inappropriate allocation of public funds.

 

 

What Gets Subsidized?

I’m always a bit amazed when I hear people complain that car transportation is subsidized. I always wonder what alternative is less subsidized? Riding a bike or walking is nearly 100% subsidized. Taking a public bus, subway or light train is subsidized around 75%. Today’s car transportation subsidy is mainly caused by inaction on the part of Congress to adjust gas taxes at the same rate CAFE fuel efficiency requirements are increase.

So if you don’t want car transportation subsidized then call your Congressperson and ask them to increase the gas tax to meet current obligations. You may want to also ask them to stop robbing the Highway Account to fund the Mass Transit Account. In the Fiscal Year to day $269,862,066 has been transferred. That’s a –22% decrease from the prior year. Its a bit ironic that gas taxes are used to subsidize mass transit while at the same time the car is getting a bad wrap for being subsidized.

I guess we should also question if the original premise is correct. Are cars subsidized? If we look closer a small portion of car transportation is subsidized. Roads within a subdivision, and sometimes offsite, are built by the developer. Bridge replacement projects are mainly funded through gas taxes, 80% Federal match, and the local funds are often subsidized by STIP funds.

So how about we start appreciating the car as an efficient mode of travel instead of advocating other forms of transportation that are more heavily subsidized then cars.

Cars ARE Mass Transit

What is mass transit? If you consider mass transit a public, large scale system that provides a city or metropolitan area a means of transportation; then you have to call the public system of roads and freeways utilized by cars mass transit.

I’ve seen a bunch of newspaper articles, blog posts, etc. claiming that America doesn’t have a great mass transit system. I’d have to disagree, I can get in my car and drive to any city in the continental United States. I can usually get there quicker than bus, train or light rail system.

Now the main reason I’m doing this post is because of straight out lies being put forth by people for the expansion of light rail, high speed rail and bus systems. Now I don’t have a problem people having these opinions, but I do have a problem with outright lies in supporting of their position. I actually read a quote in an article that stated flat out that Caltrans (DOT) wasn’t a transit operation. Caltrans is the largest transit organization in the State of California providing transportation to the masses.

A topic usually glossed over is cost. The problem is we can’t afford a large scale system of light rail and busses that don’t pay their own way. If you take a look at the fare box collection of the new mass transit systems you quickly find they don’t come close to covering the operation costs, let alone the capital costs required to build the system. I’d wager you’d be willing to pay $10 round trip in your car, but would pass up paying $3.00 round trip in a bus. I know I do everyday. The caveat being it takes about 1 hour longer taking the bus, each way. This being what i would consider a great schedule and opportunity to take the system. Now would I pay the actual cost of the trip of $12 taking the bus and take longer? I don’t think so.

If the Untied States really wanted a bus system then Greyhound would be a robust system of travel. Instead Greyhound only provides a relatively paltry 25 million passengers. Now when you were planning your last trip, did you even explore taking Greyhound? If you are for a large light rail/bus system and you didn’t think of taking Greyhound as a means of travel, then would you use a publically operated light rail or bus system? I don’t think so and I don’t really want to spend trillions of dollars for you to prove my point.

What’s the End Game Plan?

As another Earth Hour passes it makes me think once again what’s the end game plan of the environmental movement. Earth Hour is billed as “a global call for action on climate change.” If it truly is a call for action wouldn’t these non-essential lights be extinguished the other 8,764.8 hours?

Speaking of getting rid of non-essential polluting; wouldn’t the only coffee baristas be located in Africa, Hawaii and other coffee producing countries if the end game plan was to save the planet? Why is the world creating a ton of supposedly earth ending pollutants just so you can get a kick of caffeine in the morning?

Is the end goal to have us live primitively? Well I’m against that. Is it for the earth the stay the same? The environment indicates otherwise.

Can you tell me what the end game plan is?

Meat Subsidies

All of a sudden I’m seeing articles claiming meat is getting a massive amount of subsidies and causing great harm to the environment. The problem is in researching the numbers behind the claims. It seems a whole lot of assumptions are being made to get to the number. The large amount of claimed subsidies don’t go to meat, but to soy and corn farmers, well as far as I can tell. The stretch they are doing is counting the subsidies that soy and corn farmers are receiving should be counted as subsidies to meat production.

I feel this stretch is not appropriate. For if we apply the logic to other venues of government subsidies we should get rid of public transportation. For instance many employees in the bay area utilize subsidized public transportation. Companies with a large presence in the bay area include the like of Cisco, Oracle, Autodesk and other high margin businesses in the bay area. Cisco has a gross profit margin of 68%, Oracle is at 82% and Autodesk is at 95%. Most agriculture operations would like to even come close to achieving these subsidies. Many of the articles I’ve read demonize Tyson Foods; yet they only have an 8.3% gross profit margin. BART received a subsidy of $318,212,902 for the last fiscal year (non-ridership revenue), the companies seam to hardly need the subsidies. The anti-meat crowd would have to decry these blatant subsidies based on their logic. Unfortunately I would say they wouldn’t agree with my logic in this case.

Another point is environmental damages. I would say Cisco, Oracle and Autodesk contribute greatly to global warming due to providing the tools to continue the use of power hungry data centers, personal computers and small computer devices. Another logical reason to get rid of the public transportation subsidies that benefit these companies. Maybe BART needs to check where everyone works and make people pay based on where they work. It would remove the subsidies.

I don’t mind people being against meat, they have that right to voice their opinion. I would like a little more truth in the claims. For if we added up all of the costs of what we do we’d quickly come to the conclusion that we shouldn’t do anything because it all causes environmental impacts and costs to the government.