> By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. Yeah, exactly. > I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-cla

> By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. Yeah, exactly. > I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-class California taxpayer to the California weekly-commute bullet-train businessperson will be, in practice. Yeah. And a lot of the funding for the rail project is already coming from Federal and State coffers (via taxpayer money or deficit spending), so this wealth transfer is already happening. There's at least $6 billion already allocated from Federal funding programs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Financing_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Fin...) and the Proposition 1A required Federal Funds matching the $9.95 billion approved by bonds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_1A_(2008)#Provisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_1A_(200...). I don't know if the $6 billion in stimulus money "counts" towards the $9.95 billion in matching funds, nor do I know if the funds have been fully matched.