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Providing better things to richer people isnt a left/right thing??? You basically choose to stick your head in the sand is what it sounds like.

It's a bit more complicated. Basically, here's a description of the two areas:

1. closer to downtown, distance for the train to a connection is about 2-3 miles, and mostly services a shopping area; cost was about $40M; daily ridership is about 1k
2. tech hub with companies promising to expand if mass transit is added; distance to a connection (near major sports stadium) is about 13-14 miles, estimated cost is ~$900M and includes an unrelated line; estimated daily ridership increase is 10-15k initially, with lots of expansion options along existing freight rail to probably double or triple that (connects to industrial areas and a university w/ an existing commuter rail line)

For reference, the current system is about 30k daily riders. I get that the first option is significantly cheaper, but its impact is also significantly less since it only relieves some traffic on one local street. The second option could relieve traffic on a major arterial highway and encourage more businesses with high paying jobs to open up in the region.

Basically, the conservatives in the legislature want the cheaper option, not the most impactful option. Where I grew up, the Democrats wanted an option, not necessarily the cheapest or best option.

For the record, I want both options to be built. I'd much rather us spend more on rail than highway expansion (a recent expansion near #2 was $1.7B, double what it would've cost to build a rail line that could've solved the same problem).

Almost none of these policies are actually supported by any libertarian politicians.

Are these "libertarian politicians" in the room with you? The closest I've seen is libertarian-leaning conservatives, like Thomas Massie or maybe Rand Paul. But they're pretty much only "libertarian" in the fiscal sense, and even that's a stretch since it's not based in libertarian principles, but just wanting to spend less.

The foundation of libertarianism, IMO, is the Non-Aggresion Principle. It's not private property, unrestrained capitalism, or anything like that, but the idea that we should prefer policies that respect freedom to those that don't. So if we're going to raise taxes, it needs to be for something important.

I think welfare is important, since w/o a social safety net, bad luck or bad choices could ruin you and enable others to take advantage of you. If you always have the option to walk away from your job and still have access to basic necessities, your boss really doesn't have that much power over you so they're forced to respect you to keep you working for them. That solution is a lot more attractive than a whole slew of laws governing the workplace and welfare programs that often require a lot of work to gain access to. I support the NIT/UBI because it'll significantly reduce the amount of power the government and corporations have over poor people, and encourage people to take more entrepreneurial risks, which benefits society at large.

This sounds dangerously close to privatizing schools, especially where we’re talking about basic education necessary for life (K-12)

No, the research I've seen shows that the best outcomes are produced by a mix of public and charter (i.e. 100% publicly funded, privately run) schools. Charter schools and public schools both need to step up to retain funding otherwise parents will move their children to a better performing school. Areas w/ 100% charter schools seem to lose that competitive drive, and areas w/o great school mobility tend to stagnate as well.

However, since charter schools don't have bus service, they're not as available to poorer households. Hence the stipulation that bus service is moved to the city to manage, so everyone has equal opportunity to choose the school they want.

Sounds dangerous and vague, once again, almost like privatizing education by replacing a government agency.

What's dangerous and vague? School costs skyrocketed when federal student loans became commonly available (look at the admin spending of universities before and after Obama), because it lowered the barrier for more people to pay for school. On the flipside, since they're not dischargeable w/ bankruptcy, they stick with you even if you don't graduate w/ a degree.

I don't think college is right for everyone, and instead of a federal student loan option, we should encourage high schools to work w/ local businesses for apprenticeships, much like how Germany handles things. Basically, in your final two years, you can choose a college track or an apprenticeship, which would make getting a job in the trades directly after high school an option. I had a friend go to an IT-specialized high school, and he was able to get a job making $15-20/hr right out of high school (he ended getting a college degree in IT), instead of the then-common $7-10/hr jobs for high school grads.

Also, university tuition could also be funded by companies who want first dips after a student graduates. We need to be very careful on what these contracts look like to avoid indentured servitude, but I think we can find a happy middleground where companies get first pick of students they fund (hiring is very expensive) and students get to avoid getting saddled w/ debt. Likewise, private loans tend to be more humane since students have the option to declare bankruptcy, so lenders will be less likely to fund a student pursuing a program with a low chance of making enough money to repay the debt.

mandatory balanced budget

This sounds pipe dream like.

Does it? My state (Utah) has that in the Constitution, and it works pretty well (Utah is 49th in the nation for state debt per capita). If the Legislature says something needs to be done, they also need to fund it.

While I complain about our mass transit priorities, the fact is that our mass transit punches above its weight. The first line (the one I want expanded in option 2 above) existed before the Olympics, the Olympics added another, and we've since built two more and a commuter line. If everything was stalled in the Legislature due to funding not happening, mass transit would be the first to go.

It can work, but it would be a lot harder to add today than having it be there on day 1. That said, I think it's worth pushing for, especially with the shutdown nonsense every few years.

you’re presenting a prettied up, as clean as possible sounding list of policies

Sure, I'm focusing more on the ones that many leftists would agree with, because Lemmy very much skews left. My point here is to show that libertarians don't necessarily all want to strip government to its bones and leave the poor to fight for the scraps.

Here's an article about the libertarian case for Basic Income, and the Negative Income Tax in particular was championed by Milton Friedman (PDF warning; Wikipedia alternative), who was a conservative economist with libertarian leanings.

Basically, the Negative Income Tax would replace much of our current welfare system w/ a cash-based system. So the $168B I quoted earlier wouldn't necessarily be something I'd want to add to the current spending budget, but funded from a few other cuts to hopefully make the new system largely a drop-in w/o any spending changes. If it replaces Social Security (pipedream), it would probably reduce total spending and increase revenue (just removing the income cap on SS would generate $300B or so; eliminating benefits for high incomes would allow it to expand to everyone).