Correcto, Dork. When asked, even liberals agree they spend (or donate) THEIR money more efficiently and effectively than government.

Private money acquires goods and services (or investments) that are DESIRED, with both sides of each transaction benefiting from the transactions. Public spending makes at MOST one side of the “transaction” happy, and provides goods of uncertain value at best.

JPR11 — Good point. Like you, I’d don’t “worry about employment.” It’s a ruse, used to justify pouring billions into a train to nowhere in the Central Valley. But it is important do DEBUNK such nonsense, as others DO buy into the pipe dream.

EVERY aspect of the HSR projections and promises are a fraud. Certainly the cost and the “zero” operating subsidy are bogus “facts.”

Indeed, I’ve tried for YEARS to get ANYONE touting HSR to bet $100,000 that these assertions were true (yes, an escrowed, serious wager). No takers.

Every assertion the proponents made to sell us on the HSR bond was a blatant lie. The projected ridership at one point was an gargantuan 117 million passengers a year. It’s now about 30 million, I think, and still just as big a lie as before.

The “science” of astrology is more credible than anything put out by the CA HSR Authority.

The advantage to the rhesus monkey approach is NO RECURRING OPERATING DEFICIT EXPENSE. If we ever got around to building HSR, the annual operating cost would exceed a billion dollars. This is the annual TAXPAYER cost — AFTER the fare-box collections — collections which would be dramatically insufficient to cover operating cost.

1. Public sector spending requires an involuntary taking (taxation) or borrowing (debt which must be repaid with interest. The proceeds from taxation or borrowing would have been used at the discretion of the individual “contributor”, in which case jobs would have been created. The real question might be, “what is the net effect on job creation of money taken out of a private discretionary spending stream and inserted into a public sector spending stream (minus administrative costs, of course.
2. A simpler and easier to understand scenario. You could give a rhesus monkey the same huge sum of money that California HSR had to “create” the 8,589 jobs (above), send him out to Time Square to give away in $100 bills, and the result of that spending would be “job creation”, as well How many jobs? Who knows, maybe more, maybe less than the HSR project.
3. “Job creators” are loath to admit that their expenditures are never strategically calculated to get the most bang for the buck. But they don’t have to fess up, because they are rarely challenged to justify their folly.

When someone actually looked at their “study” backing these claims, it all fell apart. For instance, they would claim that one created job was really TEN jobs. They did this by “miscounting,” claiming that over 10 years each “job year” was an additional job.

IF the CA HSR Authority reports that a study has discovered the sun rises in the east, you best get up the next morning to see your first westward sunrise. These people can’t help themselves — they are pathological liars — liars for profit.