Preliminary work, including some track upgrading for higher speed trains, is under way, though public-private financing formulas and multistate coordination difficulties remain big hurdles.
At Harvard, Neil Rudenstine created a private time-distribution formula to keep his priorities straight: he told himself he would devote no less than half his time to the intellectual life of the institution — academic planning, faculty searches, tenured appointments — and no more than a third to fund-raising.
Better question: Whose idea was it to spark a private effort at Formula 1 when, even nearly 40 years ago, major corporations were behind the most successful teams?
In the most widely used private college aid formula a family of four reaches a 46% marginal rate on only $66,000 of available aftertax income, says Sandy Baum, senior policy analyst at the College Board.
For other public or private bills, the formula is simply "La Reyne le veult" ("the Queen wills it").
The formula that private lenders use to do this analysis is often hidden or remarkably opaque.
Private industry uses a formula called a cost-benefit ratio -- a dispassionate regard for profit over lives -- that government cannot afford nor consider.
To control for clustering by type of healthcare facility (public and private), we multiply this formula by the design effect of 1.5.
The thriftiest and more affluent of these families might have combined retirement assets and home equity large enough to be partially counted in private-college aid formulas, so they're more likely to be ineligible for any financial aid, and may not have lower tax brackets during their retirement years.
The remaining 20percentnt is social housing funded by private investors - a deliberate formula intended to create a healthy social and economic mix.
