“THE PARAGON OF POOR ECONOMIC CHOICES”?
Economically, there were initial concerns, particularly outside China, over the high-speed rail’s cost, debt and profitability. However, research by the Paulson Institute has estimated the net benefit of the high-speed rail to the Chinese economy to be approximately $378 billion, with an annual return on investment of 6.5%.
for the record the long term average of the s&p 500 is 6.45%, and that is considered a good investment. 6.5% is a smidge better but it should be noted that transportation historically is not very profitable by nature despite the value it provides, so the fact that they have been able to get such good returns for the economy at large is pretty impressive.
This is good context, and I typically avoid the profit conversation on topics like this altogether.
Not everything can be or should be designed and operated around profit. Providing a service costs money. When something is a public service, the benefit that the public receives from operating that service isn’t profit, the benefit they receive is the service.
The whole point of transitioning towards socialism is that we want to be able to organize our labor and put the resources that we generate as a society towards projects that give some kind of benefit to us, not just towards projects that can turn a profit for people who privately own the economy.
Yeah, but what if China had invested its HSR budget into Bitcoin instead?
This is what happened with bike lane too. Naysayers say that bike actually block people from parking their car and penalize small businesses.
But in reality local businesses profit actually goes up after the lane is set up
