This premise feels wrong: The Swiss, German, Chinese, Spanish experience is that people pay to have high speed rail services, and the G20 economies in that list pay high marginal rates of taxes just fine, for this outcome.
The "you" here is conditionally the "you" of current social mores America. It by no means is the only recent experience of America, under presidents to Reagan, the top rate of marginal tax was significantly higher than at present, and people paid.
Perhaps, if Americans were made to pay more supertax they would discover sooner than you think, how few people it inconvenienced (Bezos) and how many it benefitted.
"you" might be surprised how low the increment was on your tax base, to fund the state investment your country needs, taking into account the superwealthy, and corporate tax evasion.
https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*Jj_k4U1AwuB5Ia-9oHuJKQ.gi...
Of course, Beijing-Shanghai line is the first and only to go public, just at the beginning of 2020, and we can get their financial numnbers easily.
Many other lines are not necesarrily profitable, but few of them require government subsidy besides the initial capital investment, that is their income is more than the operational cost.
See people in here talk about land area and population while completely ignoring things like topography/zoning/protectionism. Building 100km of rail in Switzerland is never going to be comparable to building 100km on flat plains elsewhere.
But more importantly, Switzerland isn't a NATO member.
It's really disappointing to me as a transit enthusiast that the US doesn't have great high speed rail service in the Northeast Corridor, but to do so would involve clearing way for new, less curvy track, and that would be extremely expensive. Even if we did it I'm not sure it would get the usage rates that occur in Europe. The issue here is sadly more complicated that tax policy.
I disagree with your assessment because American density is very different than European density. If you look at Google Earth, there is almost continuous suburban development along the entire Northeast route. In Europe, populations are clustered in smaller urban centers. High speed rail can only stop so many times and because of this, it is more difficult for the average American to get to a train station.
This situation is obvious to people who have lived in suburban America but can be surprising to those who have not. Imagine driving up to an hour to a city center, finding a place to long term park your car near the station and then taking a mode of transportation that isn't significantly faster than your car would've been. Then needing to take an expensive taxi once you arrive because your destination city has a limited public transportation system.
Comparing region densities at face value misses the issue, the way cities and regions are designed present unique transit challenges around the world.
Improve the trains, and people will eventually wake up to them.
My other idea is high speed trains where you can take your car with you, like eurotunnel but faster.
Also, Swiss trains are pretty expensive. You don't notice because wages are high, but really, everything in this country is very expensive compared to neighbouring countries. In most countries inter-city rail is used by commuters so governments impose price caps, if there is any political pressure to lower prices here I've never seen it.
Also, cars are not expensive in Switzerland, especially when you take into account the high salaries.
Edit: link to a recent article on how many US persons expect to get rich/wealthy/millionaires ... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/13/how-much-money-americans-thi...
> Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
It's blatant and widespread.
The only respite from corruption in US - the government is severely restricted.
It’s not healthy for Europe to be so dependent on the US, as has been proven over the past 4 years.
