> (Incidentally, anyone mentioning purchasing power or worker costs doesn't know what they are talking about. Paris, Hong Kong, Spain and Singapore are all weal

> (Incidentally, anyone mentioning purchasing power or worker costs doesn't know what they are talking about. Paris, Hong Kong, Spain and Singapore are all wealthy nations with costs far closer to India and China than to the US.) You think Paris has worker costs closer to India than the US? I think you might be the one who doesn't know what you're talking about. The minimum wage in France is $10.11 per hour (at the exchange rate right now), compared with $7.25 for the US. It is at at best 50% more than China or India (where minimum wage varies by location), and labour in France is highly unionized so workers are on more than the minimum as-is. The current Paris - Lyon HSR link in France is budgeted at $12.5 billion [1]. Your idea that a California HSR project could be done for $2-4 billion is simply unreasonable. It can't be done. You're off by an order of magnitude. Is $64 billion a lot of money? Yes. Is it too much? Probably. Can it be done for $2 billion? Absolutely not. Go look at comparable mega-projects in western Europe. Crossrail in London is about $18 billion. The Gotthard Base Tunnel was $12 billion. The Moscow-Kazan HSR railway is going to cost at least $29 billion, and that's being built with Chinese assistance. [1] http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/snit-makes-rail-a-priority.html http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/snit-mak... [2] https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/chinese-to-invest-10-billion-in-moscow-kazan-high-speed-railway-39208 https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/chinese-to-invest-10-bil...