From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: Corporate Shortsightedness?
Organization: LLNL
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 16:52:05 GMT

In article <9208201420.AA28526@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> nelson_p@APOLLO.HP.COM writes:
... The Economist
>  says that industrial productivity in the US is the highest in the world,
>  much higher than Europe. ...

	Were they just counting hours worked???

 Our closest challenger in this respect is Japan, 
>  which is not exactly a paradise for vacation-seeking workers.   

	I agree.

	I make this comment about "total hours worked" because I once
saw the claim that a lot of Japanese "work" is busywork, for the sake
of appearances. I don't know how true that is, but I guess that shows
that counting hours isn't enough.

	Peter Nelson, I find your attitude toward workers heartless. I
think that those poor fellows deserve _some_ time off.

@ The French TGV, and even NYC-Washington Amtrak, successfully compete
@ with airline travel (for more details on American highway and airline
@ subsidies, see Joseph Vranich's _Supertrains_), and do so with much
@ less fuel expenditure.

>  But they are also subsidized.  Perhaps you could cite some figures from
>  Vranich's book on the subsidies.

	The French TGV's actually make money (!); the debts incurred
in setting up the lines are expected to be paid off in about 10 years
or so of operation, which should be pretty soon for the Southeast line
and at about the year 2000 for the Atlantic line.

	Amtrak's NY-DC line is also a moneymaker for the system.

	In terms of passengers carried, both routes compete
successfully with airlines; Amtrak carries more passengers than any
airline, and airline travel over routes served by the TGV actually
_dropped_.

What percentage of the cost of an airline
>  ticket is represented by a government subsidy compared to the cost of an
>  Amtrak ticket?

	Vranich does try to estimate that somewhere.

	He comes up with 50% for aviation, 39% for highways, and 28%
for Amtrak. He leaves out trust-fund income for the first two.

 Ditto with cars, but make sure you account for the gasoline
>  tax seperately since this is paid for by the users of the highways 
>  rather than by general tax revenues.

	I agree that fuel taxes for road vehicles are essentially user
fees (the more you drive, the more gas you use, and the more you pay);
these figures are for general funds.

 I also question the use of the 
>  word "successfully", above.  How much market share does Amtrak have?

	Overall, about 1% of total American intercity travel.

	But on the NY-DC route, it is competitive with the airlines. I
may add that the NY-DC route is the fastest part of the Amtrak system;
it hasn't been supported well enough to get to anywhere near TGV
speeds (regular service at 180 mph on one line).

>  I don't know anyone who travels by Amtrak but I know lots of people

	Where do you live???

>  who fly and everyone drives on the interstate.   As for Europe, they
>  have a worse situation: subsidies for the trains and anticompetitive 
>  regulations for the airlines:  An airline ticket from Amsterdam to
>  Paris costs (as of last fall, when I was traveling that route) about
>  4 times as much as a ticket from Boston to Newark, a similar distance.
>  So of course people take the train.

	And what makes you think that trains are innately _less_
economical than airplanes? Given the tone of your posting, that is
what you would seem to believe.

	Anticompetitive regulations? This may be a case of trying to
save the airlines from themselves, in this case, disastrous price
wars. They may be nice for the traveler, but money to operate the
airlines has to come from somewhere.

	It would be interesting to see what is the state of airline
subsidies in Europe; Vranich focuses on American airlines.

/Loren
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:40208 alt.politics.elections:10715 alt.politics.clinton:2098 alt.politics.bush:1879