[jeltz]

Isn't that worrying? That your country cannot do large infrastructure projects anymore. The US mamaged to build the interstates in the past and other poorer countries like Spain have successfully built extensive high speed railway networks.

[minikites]

>That your country cannot do large infrastructure projects anymore. The US mamaged to build the interstates in the past

The political right has convinced a large portion of the US population that _any_ government spending is wasteful and unnecessary. Those people don't see government spending as an investment, they see it as theft.

[swebs]

That's a pretty ridiculous strawmen argument.

[minikites]

>Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist famously declared, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

[swebs]

And his name is often invoked because he's such a fringe extremist. I doubt even 5% of Americans would agree with him, much less the ~40% who identify as right-leaning as you seem to imply.

[larkost]

It does not really matter whether those ~40% would agree. It only matter what portion of those would vote for someone who does. As a floor for that number I would submit that the Freedom Caucus has 32 of the 198 Republican seats in the house (~16% or Republican seats). Those Representatives have pretty much declared that they agree with him. So some percentage above that.

[organsnyder]

He holds a massive amount of sway within the Republican party.

[paggle]

Yes that is worrying and true. And it means that the upcoming century won't be America's the way that the previous ~century was. But that doesn't mean that we should just embark on the boondoggle anyways. If a once-capable professional athlete is aching and in pain and can't perform the way he used to, the solution isn't to step out on to the field and just give it a go. It's to fix what's ailing him first, or to just accept that his career is over.

[Nasrudith]

Definitely and it highlights issues all around from the pork vehicles such that road budget proportion is a proxy for corruption to the idiot racist NIMBYs who block public transit claiming it will bring burglars to the neighborhood - when anyone can tell you trying to move furniture on a train is not easy, and a train with police on board and in phone contact is pretty much the worst escape vehicle you can choose.

[meddlepal]

Not really, the reality is there isn't enough demand for this kind of project. Between the fact there isn't that much traffic between these cities daily already and the terrain I have a hard time seeing this being worth it over air travel.