"We have all these wonderful things we're going to do and it will all lose money forever, but think of how wonderful it will be!" Repeat until deficits are measured in trillions.

European rail operates at a constant loss. According to this Amtrak report, it sucks even worse than Amtrak. You might have noticed a few economic problems in Europe lately. This is because they too believed you can run almost an entire society at a loss.

Interstate? We built a thriving and properous nation quite nicely without an interstate highway system. It was sold to the public as a defense project, not an economic one, and it was a government subsidy to the auto industry. You want to think about something, think about how our national private rail system might have done if the Federal government hadn't paid for a gigantic automobile artery system.

Education? We built a thriving and properous nation quite nicely with a locally-controlled education system that spent less than a third of the money per student they spend now. Anyone who tells you that the only problem with our education system today is that we don't spend enough is either lying or ignorant. I've shown the numbers many times. It wouldn't suck if one or two people actually incorporated the facts into their firmware.