The flaw in your math is that California, at least, is patently incapable of building HSR, or really any long distance rail, that’s even close to as capital efficient as airplanes.

We see a see a similar math problem in metro rail too. Despite still being grimy, deteriorating, crime infested, and rat infested, NYC’s subways and trains are notoriously expensive to run and *extremely* highly subsidized. The average subway trip costs about 11 bucks, but the rider only pays 3, and around half of that 8 dollar subsidy is paid by tax dollars from outside of NYC (federal and state). Its trains are even more expensive per trip.

Yet, get to NYC suburbia (for example suburban NJ), and realistically assume 1.4 passengers per car, the average car trip of 15 miles costs about 8 dollars per passenger once you add up all costs (gas, car depreciation, car maintenance, insurance, roads, etc), and only 1 dollar of that is subsidized (road building and maintenance, etc).

Yes, some rail pays for itself - Tokyo subways come to mind - but the American “progressive” tendency to generously pad government contracts eliminates that possibility.

We can stop trying to solve the problem with a one-size-fits-all boondoggles.

Start with buses, lots of them. A bus replaces dozens of cars, is less expensive per passenger than cars, and FAR less expensive per passenger than California rail transit.

Ubers and, soon, self driving taxi fleets (which are cheaper than Ubers) or even electric planes, can fill in the corners of the remaining short hops.

As for the very long hops like SF to LA, flying remains a viable option and is becoming more efficient every year.

I ALREADY cited a quality source. It’s you choosing to assume Chamath Palihapitiya, a supporter of Obama and Biden, isn’t a “source”. Here’s a top DDG hit on the search “Chamath Palihapitiya on wealth tax”: https://finance.yahoo.com/news... As for your misinformation that the UK instituted a wealth tax similar to the one proposed in California, that’s just as easily researched. Extremely easily. Sigh.

Why is it that so many “progressives” fail to do even the most basic research? Such ignorance is arguably exactly why California is setting records in homelessness, drug deaths, cost of living, property crime, productive citizen emigration, K-12 inner city school deterioration, government inefficiency, and wealth flight. Or why supposedly “fascist” Mississippi now has twice the number of Black American fourth graders at grade level proficiency. I used to really enjoy visiting Powell Street and Fisherman’s Wharf in SF - no longer - thanks to this ignorance.

Just the mere threat of the California wealth tax ending up on the ballot has ALREADY resulted in about half of the potentially affected billionaire wealth moving out of California. The estimates are that a trillion dollars of such wealth has fled permanently in the last year or so, leaving a trillion (for the moment).

This information comes from credible California insiders like former Obama and Biden supporter Chamath Palihapitiya, where folks leaving include Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel, etc.

No. Not even close.

What actually occurred is that the UK increased tax rates on capital gains and inheritance. Neither of these is a wealth tax on current assets (unrealized gains) that’s in any way similar to the California proposal. Plus the UK government yield last year consequently increased by around 10 billion pounds - not your 30.

Also, note that just the mere threat of the California wealth tax ending up on the ballot has ALREADY resulted in about half of the potentially affected billionaire wealth moving out of California. This information comes from credible insiders like former Obama and Biden supporter Chamath Palihapitiya, folks leaving include Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel, etc.

Exactly. The right are absolutely clueless. We progressives know the border was not “wide open”, that Iran and Gaza are the good guys, that there was no significant inflation under Biden, that Trump is a Putin super spy, that the laptop wasn’t Hunter’s, that it’s impossible for COVID to have come from a lab, and that smart Venezuelans loved Chavez and Maduro. Why? Because the NYT is the paper of record. Duh!

. . . which is key to their success. They see all sides. Namely, they understand that progressives, just like conservatives, fully recognize their take is biased to one side on individual topics - yet unlike conservatives, they fail to see when their bias is systematically skewed. This is particularly notable in a variety of ways:

- Progressives rightly see Fox as right leaning, as do conservatives, but assessing NPR reveals a schism: conservatives see NPR as distinctly left leaning while progressives see it as close to neutral. The schism is only made obvious to progressives when they’re instructed to carefully use a rubric of individual issues for assessment instead of simply using “vibes”: Israel, lockdowns, teacher unions, defund the police, Venezuela, etc, etc.

- Media Matters similarly uses holistic “narrative” to judge media bias, thus largely aligning with progressive assessments of Fox and NPR, where-as All Sides empirically assesses bias by uses a rubric of positions on several individual issues to judge bias, thus aligning with conservative assessments.

- Not coincidentally, the Critical Theory and Postmodernism that’s particularly dominant in “elite” soft science academia both explicitly claim “narrative trumps empirical observation” or even “empirical observation is a tool of bigotry”. This aligns with the progressive “vibe” approach of assessing NPR and Media Matters as neutral.

- Wikipedia’s political drift over the last ten years is a particularly illuminating example of this phenomenon. Its official “perennial source” list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... has evolved over the last decade or so to green light virtually all distinctly left leaning resources as “neutral” (The Guardian, CNN, NPR) but red lights, or at least yellow lights, almost all right leaning resources.

The systemic bias of supposedly neutral mainstream media and soft science “elite” academia becomes ludicrously obvious after examining the highly aligned Biden era CNN, NPR, soft science academia, and progressive positions on a wide variety of topics. I listed several of them in a different post. Let’s review just a sample subset:

* The border is secure.
* The inflation is “temporary” and “small”.
* The Steele Report is credible.
* The laptop is a Russian plant.
* The lab leak theory is propaganda.
* Opposing long term lockdowns is unscientific.
* Defunding police is a great idea.
* The GF riots were “mostly peaceful”.
* Judging by identity instead of merit is democratic.
* Support defunding, oppose school choice, oppose VoterID, and support illegal immigration.

That last point is particularly illustrative of the blind spot. Per Gallup the progressive view on each topic - defunding, school choice. VoterID, borders - not only opposes conservative views, but also opposes the majority of Black Americans.

It’s an interesting dynamic, as the progressive choice to assume “the system” is compromised, whilst assuming mainstream media and elite academia are outside “the system” they critique, blinds them to their own actual systemic patterns - and so the they casually dismiss empirically verifiable counter arguments as mere comedy.

Exactly! I learned the following extremely helpful facts from these sources during the Biden administration:

* The inflation is minimal and, regardless, is “temporary”.
* The border is secure, and cannot be closed any further without new congressional legislation.
* Judging by identity instead of character is democratic. (The Atlantic has a particular insightful article about this.)
* Decriminalizing crime and defunding policing are wonderful ideas.
* Violent crime rates haven’t spiked.
* The working class is doing well economically. Low paid non-citizens weren’t responsible for the vast majority of job gains.
* The laptop is a Russian plant and the Steele Report is gospel.
* Smollet was attacked by MAGA.
* The lab leak theory is not at all credible.
* The GF riots were “peaceful”.
* Extremely adult books in grades schools are appropriate.
* Hormonal and surgical transitions for children are scientific and moral.
* The Afghanistan withdrawal was a success.
* Restarting Nord Stream 2 and stopping PennEast are helpful actions.
* Refusing to arm Ukrainians is a great idea.
* Funding Hamas and Iran is smart.
* The Houthis should be removed from terrorist watch lists.
* Biden is fully mentally competent.
* The majority of Black Americans: support defunding, oppose school choice, oppose VoterID, or support illegal immigration.
* It is “fake news” that Kamala was a border czar, donated to free GF rioters, and was rated the most liberal Senator.
* The government isn’t telling social media to suppress dissenting empirically backed information.
* Mississippi is fascist, and isn’t measurably doing a far better job teaching Black American children than progressive California.

There’s always a “powerful cabal”! That’s been 100% true throughout human history and worldwide, regardless of culture!

What you’re (perhaps deliberately) missing is that schizophrenics and their apologists underestimate the power of a pluralistic society to integrate and handle such “cabals”, and so choose to reject blind justice, rule of law, decentralized government, free speech, etc as the best methods for harnessing and constraining them.

Violent schizophrenics aren’t “right”, nor is encouraging them.

Unfortunately, Simpson’s Paradox is a hard concept to grasp by most. It requires second order thinking.

You can easily goose the “numbers” that you “like” without broad long term benefits, or even broad underlying benefits, because of Simpson’s paradox, as my much more detailed undisputed data about the actual living standards of the lower quintiles clearly shows. Data that, mysteriously, you have yet to directly refute.

In addition, when the numbers actually do have solid legs underneath, they didn’t magically get there days into each Democrat’s term - they were part of a preceding upward curve that often was quite steep before they took over. Obama is a great example of this: benefiting from a dramatic rise initiated by Bush2 largely addressing the housing crisis (which had its roots in criminally stupid bipartisan Clinton era policy!), but his chaotic economic policies were a self defeating brake on that rise, infamously “flattening the curve” into a molasses slow recovery, pumping money into non-productive pockets, and accelerating mass deindustrialization.

Venezuela shows how this works. Chavez’ deficit spending, a very typical ultra progressive “solution”, for example, temporarily pumped up Venezuela’s GDP, and helped his family become billionaires. But it eventually plunged the country into economic chaos - including impoverishing the lower quintiles.

Nope. It’s easily shown the data I supplied is extremely relevant and correct.

  “Leptons”, unintentionally or not, is pulling a fast one. He is supplying highly aggregated statistics that reveal very little about the actual living standards of the lower quintiles (the proletariat). The statistics I supplied are FAR more relevant, and easily verified.

Because “Leptons” deflects (yet again) using ad hominem, it seems more likely that this is intentional, but we can be charitable.

The key underlying problem: the credulous are extremely susceptible to Simpson’s Paradox, and democrats like Leptons are either highly credulous or fully willing to take advantage of this.

Nope. Absolutely nothing I wrote is incorrect. “Leptons” is deliberately supplying highly aggregated statistics that reveal very little about the actual living standards of the lower quintiles (the proletariat). The statistics I supplied are FAR more relevant, and easily verified, thus “Leptons” deflects (yet again) to ad hominem.

The key underlying problem: the credulous are extremely susceptible to Simpson’s Paradox, and democrats like Leptons are either highly credulous or fully willing to take advantage of this.

To put a finer point on it: the Wikipedia page’s concentration on unemployment instead of living wage employment, inevitably backfiring inflationary deficit spending, implicitly crediting naturally long term recovery arcs from shocks to democrats (COVID, housing crisis, etc), and on GDP instead of all quintile quality of living, are all classical tricks of democrat partisan economists.