IRON HORSE posted:When you are out on a summer drive and see road construction, know this: Your taxes are at work. When you see a railroad crew fixing the rails, who pays them?
Who pays for the TSA?
"Bought the last roomette on each train. Whatever Amtrak challenges are, lack of ridership isn't one of them."
That has been my experience, too. Amtrak seems to have pretty good ridership both locally and for long distance.
TSA is paid for by taxes of varying sorts, among other things the post 9/11 security feed that is on all tickets, some of it also comes from Homeland security funds, some of it through fees the airlines pay..but TSA workers are federal employees, not of the airport or airlines.
As far as that rail crew goes working on the rail, while the company pays their salary (or they pay a contractor who pays the salary), the government helps defray that cost since the employees salary is a deductible expense on taxes, plus if they are putting in some kind of capital improvement versus plain maintenance, they can deduct labor cost towards capital improvement, too.
