“…And I’m Here To Help”
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
When I studied abroad in college, the best deal was to ride a school bus to Winnipeg then fly to Amsterdam and on to Paris. The trip took 24 hours and cost $460 in 1979 dollars which is worth $1,500 in 2014 dollars. Canadian air fares were cheaper than American because our government regulated air carrier routes, creating mini-monopolies that kept prices high.
Today, I can fly Minneapolis to Paris direct in 9 hours for $1,200.
The one thing that Jimmy Carter did right was de-regulated airlines and made air fare affordable for ordinary Americans.
Of course, letting airlines decide which routes are profitable means some people lose air service. Liberals are still arguing we ought to start subsidizing small airports again so people don’t have to drive to hub terminals to catch a flight. It’s all about fairness, you see, and equality. People who live in Minneapolis can jump right on the airplane. People from Thief River Falls, Granite Falls or Cannon Falls must drive to the Minneapolis hub airport.
Yeah, it’s not fair. But it’s cheap. And that covers a multitude of other sins.
Deregulation worked for airlines. Wonder how it’d work for other industries such as, say, health insurance?
Clearly Joe hates womyn.
January 31st, 2014 at 6:08 am
We also shouldn’t bailout airlines. It’s better to pay a little more for better service.
Subsidizing the bad operators just hurts the good ones unfairly. It’s criminal.
Liberals don’t get this concept.
January 31st, 2014 at 8:52 am
With regard to subsidizing the small airports… When I’m in these areas on business, I’ll hear from the natives how much they enjoy their ‘rural’ existence and how it affords them easy access to their interests like say hunting, fishing, etc. Then when you hear that they (or more often their elected reps.) remark that they want the same stuff the urban areas have such as easy access to a major airport, you wonder if they recognize the contradiction?
PS: A few years back I was traveling regularly to Western Canada. It cost around $1,000 to fly direct from MSP to Edmonton. If I drove to and flew from Winnipeg, it cost $300 on a Canadian carrier like WestJet. Not sure where those rates are now, but it was worth the drive to do it that way.
January 31st, 2014 at 9:41 am
Yoru time is not free. Wasting 15 hours instead of being productive is not a good arguement. There is nothing wrong with having rural airports and charge accordingly (ie not subsidized rates) for the provilige.
January 31st, 2014 at 12:30 pm
Essential Air Service was meant to provide service to remote, smaller markets. Many in Alaska as that is the only way to provide access. Some are to assist small cities that have colleges and/or a big business. Aberdeen SD for example. But it also ended up serving towns that weren’t very far from a regular airport. And the subsidy per passenger is huge.
January 31st, 2014 at 1:58 pm
It is not (or at least not just) liberals who wan’t to preserve small airports.
http://madisonproject.com/2012/06/gop-appropriators-reinstate-rural-air-subsidies/
Small rural airports are more likely to have GOP Congresspeople.
January 31st, 2014 at 2:29 pm
I think RickDFL points out why we Wingerz aren’t able to sway the emotions of the people. See if you use the word “preserve”, it sounds downright neighborly. You can “preserve” rural air service? Hmmm. So…
Want to open a mine in the iron range? Claim you are merely ‘preserving the heritage’ of the range. Whether it makes sense financially, environmentally or employment-wise makes no matter. You are preserving a hallowed way of life if you will.
By the way RickDFL, this is not a slam on your comment. One of the issues many in the GOP (or as you might know them, the TEA-baggers) have with the leadership is the undying devotion to subsidizing, er, uh “preserving” things like rural air service in that it only helps a select few with the where with all to lobby for subsidized air service at their fellow taxpayers expense. The same people who argue against the expansion of light and heavy rail trains where the taxpayer picks up 50% or more of the tab per rider, ought to be more consistent.
January 31st, 2014 at 2:34 pm
To jump off from what Seflores wrote:
Yep, Rick; some Republicans are just as promiscuous about throwing around tax dollars as Democrats are. See also every “farm bill” since the thirties.
That is the big battle in the GOP – between the “establishment” and the Tea Party (who largely are genuine fiscal conservatives).
See also the vote for the DFL’s Viking’s stadium; many pre-2010 Republicans voted for it; virtually none from the Class of 2010 did.
Which is, of course, why the media and left (ptr) is so hard at work slandering the Tea Party; they present the voter an actual choice.
January 31st, 2014 at 3:56 pm
From the Madison Project link: “Tea party lawmakers from rural areas were among those fighting the hardest to preserve taxpayer subsidies for airline flights into and out of small towns last year”. I am not sure this is a case of Tea Party (anti-subisdy) vs. Establishment (pro-subsidy). The more rural a district, the more Tea Party leaning, but also the more likely to need an airport subsidy. Suburban GOPers near big city airports probably find it easier to vote against rural subsidies.
January 31st, 2014 at 4:13 pm
Mitch: “virtually none from the Class of 2010 did.” I count at least 9 in the GOP. To be fair, about 20 went the other way. But kind of a long way from virtually none.
February 1st, 2014 at 5:11 am
Rent seeking is rent seeking. Waste is waste.
Nineteen times out of twenty, when government–politicians–try allocating resources to NON-PUBLIC GOODS (look it up, it has a strict definition) bad things happen.
It slows down the economy. It strangles aggregate opportunity.
Furthermore, choo-choo trains ARE a public good and they will NEVER workout in the sense we are talking about with the airports.
How do politicians get elected so they can ruin our lives with this stupidity? Alinsky tactics and K-Street money.
Rick is basically doing what the left does: they justify the bad and stupid by point to other bad and stupid things.
We are going to get an Ayn Rand / Ron Paul world the hard way. I guarantee it. http://bit.ly/1i2uRUu
February 1st, 2014 at 5:14 am
JMO, 100 years of excessive Fed easy money and the excessive government centralization it engenders makes all of this sort of ineluctable.
The bond market will stop it the hard way.
February 1st, 2014 at 5:28 am
Also the destruction of so much production in WWII, and so much uncompetitive communism until recently, allowed us to get used to an incredibly stupid way to organize a society.
We are going to get “un-stupid” the hard way.
February 1st, 2014 at 6:30 am
F’ing wind turbines for electricity will never, ever work out. There is no chance. Even if the wind blew all of the time, it’s unworkable due to there limitations of space-time.
Rent seeking and waste. Bird killing. Makes areas uninhabitable.