Comments on: China Knows

By: PortfolioTilt

PortfolioTilt — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:58:31 +0000

Love, it…well spoken. Rail is one important area China will continue to work on as it continues to build its domestic economy. After traveling on Japan's high speed system, I am in love although widespread bullet trains in China inst likely. We have also been looking for some good wind pure play stocks, found a couple but highly speculative.

By: PortfolioTilt

PortfolioTilt — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:58:31 +0000

By: Noah David Simon

Noah David Simon — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:33:08 +0000

I'd prefer to stay off track

By: gregor.us

gregor.us — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:25:00 +0000

We have a ton of densly populated areas in the US that continue to be barely served by rail, and that are still served by automobile infrastructure. One example is the entirety of Southern California from Santa Monica to San Diego, in a continuous strip 8-10 miles from the coast. I define these great swaths of urban-suburbia now as dense enough to qualify. Also, as I have written elsewhere, there's a whole uptake process in the West, which begins with vocal assertions that public rail can never work because the cities in the West were simply not laid out for public rail. That typically begins a 10 year process that goes from disbelief to very high rates of ridership. LA light rail is a great example.

You completely overstate the issues here by raising the strawman of China's rapacious land use policies (lack thereof) as the benchmark to how a greater investment in public rail would impact the US. My use of the Chinese example is much more narrow, and targeted. They are building lots of rail because investing in further automobile architecture is dumb.

And the US is not standing still on automobile architecture, it is not simply "conserving what they have." Automobile architecture here remains in gross excess and is a huge drag on our productivity, and we continue to invest in it.

G

By: Realist

Realist — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:51:02 +0000

Rail only works in densly populated areas. It's not cost effective versus airplanes or even cars if the trains are mostly empty. Electification of autos would be the smarter policy. Of course, we'll need lots of nuclear, hydro and coal burning plants. Try building one of those in America. California is on the verge of having a third world power supply because they've been building low output wind and solar instead of coal and nuclear. China's gets that it needs to grow, American are trying to conserve what they have.

If you want to let the government take your land and give you a pittance to build powerplants all over America, or take even more land for wind and solar (and let's not forget Americans are already suing over wind turbines saying they disturb their sleep, among other complaints); if you want to tell businesses such as Exelon, GE, Caterpillar, First Solar, Halliburton, Anadarko, James River, etc. that America is open for business, strip mine and pave and build everywhere to get our electric energy production up, then we'll “get it” the way China does.

By: Time to Shut Off the Lights

Time to Shut Off the Lights — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:03:56 +0000

We DO know but our politicians are mostly morons and self-dealing crooks, like President Empty Suit. The “Stimulus” Bill is proof of that.

By: gregor.us

gregor.us — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:53:48 +0000

I think what's clear, now that the US stimulus package is nearly done, is that China's package is more truly Keynesian and thus is far liklier to have a sustained impact on job creation--from a Keynesian perspective.

In fact, this may be a good econ experiment to compare the two as we go along.

G

By: gregor.us

gregor.us — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:37:48 +0000

I stole the photo.

By: gregor.us

gregor.us — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:36:12 +0000

But it will be more expensive for the US to try and run cities that are wed to the automobile when petrol is 12-15 dollars per gallon starting in 2012. My firm position is that just about any plan will be cheaper than a do nothing plan.

By: Ronald

Ronald — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:42:36 +0000

To “Sam Frakus” and “Z”:

I agree with your observation on the huge difference between the labor cost of the US and China. However, mass building of road and bridge, as the stimulus package calling for, are similar labor-intentisve endeavors. Therefore, I think that Gregor's focus is really on the choice among alternative transportation methods – when we still have a choice.