It took just six years for men working with their hands to build the nearly 3,000-km-long first U.S. transcontinental railway in the 1860s, notes Rich Lowry in Jewish World Review. In Democrat-run 21st century California, US$15 billion and 17 years have been consumed without laying a single mile of track for the state’s high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The latest cost estimate: US$100 billion.
At Least He Paid his Losing Bet
Paul Ehrlich, author of the spectacularly incorrect 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb, recently died at 93. Despite his longevity, Ronald Bailey points out in Reason, Ehrlich did not live to see even one of his numerous apocalyptic predictions come true. The world’s population certainly grew, but not merely larger, richer and fatter too. Most famously, Ehrlich once bet economist Julian Simon that the world was approaching economic collapse – but in 1990 had to mail Simon a cheque.
