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Comment by scottLobster | Hacker News Reader

To be fair a lot of Chinese rail is extremely wasteful and more of a government run full employment program than a direct economic benefit.

But I'll agree it would have probably been better to spend the Iraq/Afghanistan war money domestically on any number of things.

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Nothing wrong with government subsidized rail. The government subsidizes cars too by funding the roads. I assume you're not in favor of turning all interstates into toll roads? Also in the end it's cheaper to get started with laying down rail early than to wait until after people have moved into the area and you have to displace some of them in order to build the rail line.

Wasteful in that rail laid per dollar is not good or wasteful in that the rail in underused?

What's wasteful about that?

What’s wasteful about paying millions of people to shovel dirt? Now take your answer and apply it to your question.

Nothing, if you need dirt shoveled...

Jobs programs make us poorer on net.

Its not black and white some of these jobs might be shitty but atleast someone gets a paycheque, the other alternative is that these people depend on unemployment benefits and then vote for demagogues who promise to bring back jobs and drive out immigrants who stole those jobs.

I can't see how it would be better than if huge swaths of people didn't do anything and lived in squalor. Who cares how much it affects the GDP. Honestly I'd probably find it more rewarding to operate a train for some people than all of the professional programming work I've done.

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