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Monthly Archives: June 2020

Selling Federal Assets to Pay the National Debt

By | | Policy brief
6 Comments

Last week, the federal debt reached $26.3 trillion, and it is going nowhere but up. In fact, it grew by $1 trillion in just the previous 40 days.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

Not to worry, say some people. After all, federal assets are worth somewhere around $200 trillion. President Trump once suggested that it might be possible to pay off the federal debt by privatizing federal assets. This paper will take a realistic look at whether this is true. Continue reading →

Shaking Down Local Taxpayers for Mixed-Use

By | | Housing
1 Comment

Steven Malanga works for the fiscally conservative Manhattan Institute and is the author of Shakedown, a book about how bureaucrats and left-wing interest groups seek to make government bigger and bigger. So why does he support the shakedown of local taxpayers for redevelopment projects?

Malanga’s recent article in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal describes how developers are turning old shopping malls into housing projects. He writes as though this were a brilliantly innovative solution to both the housing shortage and the decline of brick-and-mortar retailing.

It’s not. It’s central planning, pure and simple, and almost every case he cites required a shakedown of local taxpayers to subsidize the residential portions of the developments. Continue reading →

What’s So Magic about $1 Trillion?

By | | Transportation
3 Comments

News reports say that the Trump Administration is going to propose a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to “boost the economy.” One writer says it will not only promote recovery but also help the environment.

Since Trump promised a $1 trillion infrastructure plan when he was running for president in 2016, it may seem like it is about time that he kept that campaign promise. But those who thought he was crazy to make that promise in the first place may wonder just where he found enough infrastructure to spend $1 trillion. Part of the answer, it turns out, is a little bit of trickery in the proposal.

Infrastructure, of course, includes airports, highways, pipelines, ports, power plants, railroads, telecommunications, transit lines, water & sewage facilities, and more. A lot of this is private, including pipelines, railroads, and telecommunications. Most of the remainder, including highways, ports, transit, and water & sewage facilities, is owned by state or local governments. Really, aside from roads and other structures on federal lands, the only infrastructure facilities owned by the federal government are some hydroelectric dams. Continue reading →

To Densify or Not to Densify: The Debate Continues

By | | Policy brief
8 Comments

Is there a huge demand for high-density housing that is unmet due to oppressive land-use regulations such as single-family zoning? Do homeowners support single-family zoning in order to create a cartel boosting their home values? Can denser housing reduce housing prices in high-priced regions?

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

Market urbanist Scott Beyer and I have been addressing these kinds of questions in our continuing debate over whether densification or sprawl are better solutions to housing affordability problems. This debate began in a Reason Foundation video called “Density or Sprawl? How to Solve the Urban Housing Crisis.” We met face-to-face, sort of, in a webcast last week titled “Build Up or Build Out: Solving the Housing Crisis,” in which we were joined by Cato scholar Scott Lincicome. The webcast generated a number of questions from the audience that weren’t answered during the event due to technical difficulties. I also posted a short article last week on the Antiplanner and Scott Beyer put up a post on his Facebook page. Continue reading →

HART Now Makes Video Games

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
1 Comment

KHON News discovered that the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART), which has yet to operate any transit (and will never operate truly rapid transit), has a link to a video game on its website called “Outrun Da Train.” HART apparently paid $190,000 to create this video game.

When asked why it spent so much on something that has so little to do with completing what is likely to be the most expensive above-ground rail line in the world, HART responded that the price was cost-effective since it was developed in Hawaii rather than on the mainland. Yes, but why a video game? Continue reading →

Is Density Worth the Price?

By | | Housing
18 Comments

Should cities build more dense housing or sprawl out at the urban fringe? Scott Beyer, the Market Urbanist, wants to see more density while I want to allow more sprawl. Surprisingly, in a debate yesterday over which was the best way to make housing affordable again, Beyer conceded that low-density development was more affordable than high-density. Instead, he argued for high-density development for other reasons.

High-density development, he said, was more environmentally sound, fiscally sustainable, and led to greater worker productivity (which economists call “agglomerative economies”). He claimed that people would live a lot denser if they could but such density is outlawed. Continue reading →

Cruise Trains for Amtrak

By | | Transportation
4 Comments

Amtrak plans to reduce all but one of its overnight trains to three-day-a-week service starting October 1. Doing so, says Amtrak, will save “as much as $150 million” a year. Amtrak doesn’t say so, but three-day-a-week trains offer almost as much political benefit to the agency as daily trains.

I have a better idea. Amtrak should double the routes served by its overnight trains, but run most of them just once a week. Add more lounge space to each train so that passengers have more places to go and the trains become cruise trains, not trains for getting from point A to point B. Amtrak is a slow and expensive way to get from point A to point B, but it is an excellent way to see parts of the country that can’t be seen from an interstate freeway.

Some routes Amtrak could add are the former North Coast Limited route from the Twin Cities to Seattle/Portland; the former City of Portland/Pioneer route from Ogden to Portland; the former City of Los Angeles/Desert Wind route from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles; the Golden State route from Chicago to Los Angeles via El Paso; the Gulf Wind route from New Orleans to Florida, and the Floridian route from Chicago to Florida. Continue reading →

Demand the Right to Pay for Your Own Transportation!

By | | Policy brief
1 Comment

Sixty years ago, America had the finest transportation system in the world, and it was almost all unsubsidized. Congress had subsidized the construction of some railroads, but that included only about 7 percent of the nation’s rail mileage. Congress had also subsidized the construction of some airports, but by 1960 that was near an end. Most of America’s highways had been built and maintained out of highway user fees such as gasoline taxes and tolls. The nation’s transit systems were mostly private and even the public ones funded their operating costs and many of their capital costs exclusively out of transit fares.

Click image to download a six-page PDF of this policy brief.

That began to change in the 1960s. In 1964, Congress promised capital grants to cities and states that took over transit companies. Most of the government-owned transit agencies also used tax dollars to cover part of their operating costs. In 1970, Congress took over the nation’s intercity passenger trains and subsidies to Amtrak exceeded $1 billion a year. In 1981, Congress began diverting highway user fees to pay for transit. This led to such a political demand for those funds that, in 1998, Congress gave up on the idea that expenditures out of the highway transit fund should be limited to user fees paid into that fund. Today, Congress is transferring $10 billion per year of general funds into the highway trust fund to keep the money flowing without raising gas taxes. Continue reading →

2018 Transport Subsidies and Costs

By | | Transportation
1 Comment

Last year, I published a policy brief that calculated 2017 transportation subsidies and costs for airlines, Amtrak, highways, and transit. When 2018 data for Amtrak, highways, and transit became available, I included an updated chart in a policy brief on transportation after the pandemic. But that wasn’t exactly prominent — I had a hard time finding it when someone asked me about it recently — and it didn’t have many details so I’m going to expand on it here.

The above chart is useful because it shows the disparities. Amtrak spends almost four times as much to move someone a passenger mile as the airlines. Transit agencies spend almost five times as much to move someone a passenger mile as personal automobiles. Continue reading →

Housing Crisis Debate

By | | Housekeeping
4 Comments

Should cities address high housing costs by building denser or by allowing more low-density housing at the urban fringe? In other words, should American urban areas build up or build out? Wednesday, June 17, Cato will hold a webcast featuring a debate between these two views featuring Market Urbanist Scott Beyer, Cato Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole, and Cato Adjunct Scholar Scott Lincicome.

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The webcast will be from noon to 1 pm Eastern Time and will include an opportunity to question speakers by tweeting to #CatoEvents, using Facebook Live, or using the comment box on this page. You can register for the webcast here. I hope you will be able to join us.