When Money Comes From Magic Aardvarks, Does it Matter How You Spend It?

Sometimes two stories come together in the most perfect way. The first story comes from Portland, Oregon. The city of Portland has decided that bus drivers deserve $100,000 year salaries. What's more amazing are the 7 to 12 pages of
comments in The Oregonian sticking up for the bus drivers.

There are two problems within the story. The first is the acceptance of the premise that the bus driver through either seniority, outstanding driving record, ability to always bring donuts on Wednesday or some other extraordinary skill is
entitled to take 10th of $1 million a year from the hands of working stiffs.

Think back to Ralph Kramden.  In Jackie Gleason's day bus drivers lived in tenements. What is likely to send you straight to the moon...it takes five families making $80,000 a year and being taxed at 25% to pay for just the salary of this municipal servant.  That's five families giving up one quarter of their income so that a bus driver can live on a salary 25% greater than the families they serve.  In addition to laying off the bus driver, whoever allowed his salary to become so inflated and so out of  line with the compensation of the people who pay him should also be fired.

Now comes the outrageous part.

The state of California and the federal government have decided to construct a high-speed bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Obviously with jet service between the two cities at the top and the bottom of each hour and
flight times of 40  minutes, the public was clamoring for a 3 1/2 hour transit time between the two cities via Bakersfield.Then when you are flush with the trillion or so dollars in stimulus money, doesn't really matter what you spend on?

Where are the environmental impact studies, noise studies, pollution studies, effect on wildlife studies, effect on historic neighborhood studies and land-use studies that the state imposes on private business? If only half of these requirements were imposed on this project it would never be funded.

Are there families in Kern County wanting to spend $25 apiece to ride a bullet train to Los Angeles, then get on a bus and travel to Disneyland, spend the day, get back on the bus, and finally take the train back to the city which produces the largest
number of rutabagas and turnips on the West Coast?

Is building this project justified by an increased terror threat? Clearly terrorists could never find a way to sabotage 600 to 800 miles of track. Is this project advanced based upon the jobs created? it would take 500 families making $80,000 a
year to pay for each mile of this project, assuming construction costs could be constrained to $10 million a mile. but since the money to  develop the train line has to be borrowed there is an additional 15 families paying interest for each mile of the project.

Now throw in the Portland bus driver concept. How many hundred thousand dollar year employees does the system mandate?  What is  their cost in salaries, benefits  and the
legacy payments? 


Would it be better if the federal government just commissioned  a $500 million bronze statue. (Imagine Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barack Obama drinking a beer as LBJ picked his dogs up by their ears, standing  over 900 feet high.) This would clearly be as beneficial as a bullet train, plus it does not come with bloated salaries to maintain and service the  byproduct of wasted tax dollars.