When is a hamburger not just a hamburger? When it costs Amtrak $16 to make. They sell it for $9.50, and taxpayers cover the difference — every time. Then it becomes a glaring symbol for spiraling costs, crippling deficits, and the inherent inefficiencies of big government.
Thirty years ago, the idea of Amtrak losing money on food sales was as outrageous as it is today. (Hungry customers on a moving train with nowhere else to go. How hard can it be?) In fact, it was so outrageous that Congress passed a law against it. The Amtrak Improvement Act of 1981 prohibits the government-owned company from selling food at a loss. Nice try. Today, Amtrak is selling more and losing more than ever before.
Comments
Great column, John. Amtrak is the perfect example of government attempting to run a business, and the ultimate results it creates.
This is a riot, but not surprising. The funniest part is that they passed a bill making it illegal to lose money on serving food, helloooooooooooo I see common sense is still on vacation, can't wait for it to come back.
This article is ludicrous in its one-sided hypocrisy, talk about defending his capitalist buddies in the medical-industrial complex! American health-care is not ridiculously inefficient and poorly run? How about this: a short time ago a friend of mine had to spend the night in a hospital for running some tests. The cost for that one night visit? $4200 for the hospital visit and another $3000 for the tests! How does "socialist" medicine work in comparison? Just go to, say, Germany, and do an apples to apples comparison: for an overnight visit my father-in-law paid $330 for the hospital room and another $420 for tests. And guess what? German medicine is incomparably better. I'd take German healthcare any day over this train-wreck of capitalist healthcare in the United States, John Sununu can take his $16 hamburger and eat it, which, judging by his girth, is exactly what he's likely to do...
Sununu once again offers himself up as the poster boy for the problems of the far right side of the teeter-totter. Tunnel vision, myopia, distortion, self- serving memory, and rosy wishful thinking call for a rebuttal 3x longer than the original piece. Where would the conversation start, privatizing the railroads? How about the distortions in his drive-by shooting on the topic of health care? If the Globe wants to find rational, thoughtful, and worthy voices speaking from the right side of issues, they had best take Sununu and Jacoby and give them their walking papers. This column is a waste of time and space.
John, Massachusetts just passed such a law - prohibiting growth in health care costs from exceeding the rate of inflation. Let's see how that works out.
I think there is a bit of a difference between a niche service that many Americans never use, whose overall impact on the budget is small, and where there are alternatives such as planes, and health care that impacts everyone. Contract out food service. No brainer. Agreed. Some of Amtrak in the wide open spaces in our country can't make money. In the dense Northeast, there is appeal of center city to center city transit without airports. Fares in the US are far less than say, the UK, where fares are higher for similar travel. Is it a case that our airline system is too good for trains to compete, low gas prices that allow inefficient individual driver travel, or a combination of both?
How about the money each year lost by the government on the highway system. On any non-toll road you could calculate the amount needed to maintain the road, fix potholes, and plow snow. Just like the train system, "the taxpayers are forced to cover the loss"...
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The average US Senator has a staff of 34, and the average congressman a staff of 14. How's that for efficiency?
This is such a misleading column; but what could I expect from the Sununus? The government does a lot of things right: national defense (seen any terrorists around lately?); national parks; medicare, social security; there's a list too long to list! To be babbling about hamburgers and then jump to national health is asinine and a hamburger is not frankly, a glaring symbol of anything at all. More Republican exaggeration. How about a column helping to lower the cost of the hamburgers?
The cost to maintain our public roads, bridges, etal is supposed to be paid from the federal taxes on each gallon of gasoline (Highway Trust Fund). However, like Social Security, Congress has helped themselves from this piggy bank to pay other (non highway) costs. After all, it's not their money and they spend it with abandon.
What, you don't want to read the truth?
If they actually did something constructive (and that's with a capital IF), it might be worthwhile.
Beware, the governments solution to rising health care costs is to short change the providers. After they receive less, we will soon get less.
Another frivolous analogy by the right wing in the form of a food service for travelers. Maybe all cafeterias should be closed in government buildings so the workers, including congress, should eat in privately owned restaurants. If the food service is currently outsourced, they may argue, we still pay for the overhead. If the government actually showed a cash profit in running Amtrak, the right wing would be shouting that it's not fair to private enterprise. The REAL profit that right wingers refuse to see is the value of removing gas burning vehicles from our highways, in addition to the availability of a much needed transportation infratructure. WE should strive for more efficiency in government while providing much needed services. This is the real profit.
Our current healthcare system is essentially private, and it is the most inefficient and costly of any first-world countries (which happen to be more socialized), being about twice as expensive as others. Either the government would make it even worse, or those mysterious market forces don't work in healthcare.
Mr Perfection bloviates again. Notice no ideas except "the free market", the same that made your 401k disappear. It actually didn't disappear, it went into someone else's pocket. How's that for efficiency, John?
Where does Sununu get these numbers for the cost of producing a burger in the first place, and are they at all credible? He says that Amtrak is losing money on long distance train tickets, but does not provide any information about what fraction of Amtrak rides are long-distance, so he is obviously not giving the reader enough information to evaluate how serious a problem this is. When you go back and look at other things Sununu has said over the years, including "trees cause pollution" and Obama needs to learn how to be an American, you really have to wonder about this guy. We wish the Globe would find a better conservative voice for its opinion page, someone more serious about dealing with the very real issues that face our country, not these fake ones that conservative ideologues love to cough up over and over. To some degree, passenger rail is a national resource that facilitates commerce and national integration. We subsidize our highways and airports, and every industrialized country supports its rail system. Amtrak costs us about half a billion a year in subsidies. In contrast, we are spending over $100 billion on the Afghan War, and because the Republicans prohibited Medicare for negotiating drug prices, we are spending about $25 billion/year on subsidized meds that we would not otherwise need to spend. If you applied Sununu's approach to the Post Office, most of the post offices in New Hampshire would be shut down immediately. That having been said, we do also wish that train travel were more affordable. A round trip ticket from Boston-New York is $140 to $280, which is about double or triple what it should be if regular people are going to use it. You either need to be well-off enough so that the money doesn't matter or traveling on an expense account.
John Sunnunu knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. What does he recommend? That Amtrak cut out scheduled trains because seats are not full enough? Maybe they should double rates to $200 or $300 for a Boston/NY trip. Flying to NY used to be reasonable. Now it's $650. People NEED a reliable and affordable mode of transportation between cities - for business. Subsidizing that (if that's what it takes) is in everyone's best interest.
"This fiasco exposes more than just a sea of red ink. It affirms the fundamental truth that government can't do anything efficiently." Says Mr. Sununu, expressing an opinion as "fundamental" fact. For every so-called fiasco, there is a success. And of course, no mention that the much-vaunted private sector could be fiasco-free, because it's not. Look at the frequently compiled lists at the Globe of companies, particularly retail establishments, that have gone under or otherwise disappeared. Bad managerial decisions, John? Or just "marketplace Darwinism"? So, yeah, let's shut down the trains and then we can all hitchhike down Route 95 to D.C. to the next protest.
You think Amtrak's hamburgers cost the taxpayers a lot? How about the bungled and completely unnecessary war in Iraq that John Sununu voted for and defended? It's easy for ideologues and supporters of the super-rich, like John Sununu, to find examples of waste and mistakes in order to deride government programs and infrastructure, just as it would be in the private sector if they ever looked. What they fail to see, however, is that government-run and, yes, subsidized passenger rail is not just a service, but an investment. Like highways, airports, high-speed internet, water and sewer service, intercity passenger rail and public transit attract development. They allow businesses, residents and visitors to move about at a much lower cost than private vehicles and highways, and the money they save can then be spent elsewhere in the economy. This argument can easily be extended to health care. With government oversight and subsidization, patients can save more and providers should waste less money. That will allow people to spend money elsewhere. It will also enable them to live healthier lives. Of course, whether its health care or passenger rail, John Sununu would rather that the government save its money to spend on overseas misadventure and tax cuts for the wealthy.
I find it deeply disturbing that someone could be so antiAmerican to think that universal health care, which most other countries in the world have, could not be implemented in the USA in a form better than anyone else. Why does Mr. Sununu have such a low opinion of my beloved country?
Why do conservatives like John Sununu continue to argue against Obamacare as though this has never been tried in another country before and is brand new? All the things that could go wrong? There are dozens of other countries with working national health care. Its intellectually dishonest to ignore the successful examples of these other countries, that shows that it does indeed work.
"John E. Sununu is a former Republican senator from New Hampshire." That pretty much says it all.
The problem is not government - it's all those SUVs on the road. That's also perhaps why this July was the hottest ever in recorded history. And by the way, it is in fact not that wide of a leap from a hamburger to a bypass, Mr. Sununu.