This is ridiculous. The love for socialism will never die.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/28/AR2008082802851.html
He should read Reisman’s latest entry on the LVMI site. It’ll rid him of any nonsense he buys into.
-Jon
This guy is a Professor Emeritus and a public policy wonk. He’s so far gone, all we can do is hope he checks himself into a facility that serves jello every day and has shuffleboard tournaments.
Let’s tax ourselves into prosperity!
His argument is that sometimes innovative technology has start up costs that are too high for the private sector to put together, therefore we need the government to put up these costs initially in order to spur innovation.
I have yet to hear anyone counter this argument in this thread.
Here is a counter argument:
The government has no business nor need to get involved in assuming the risk for companies looking to purchase expensive technology. If it is a truly worthwhile and potentially profitable investment, there is more than enough private capital available and enough investors looking to, well, you know, invest. The only reason a corporation looks to the government for money for such purchases is because they have made it far easier than doing it privately. The orignal sin is the government getting involved to begin with. Once one governemnt is willing to provide capital to a business for whatever purpose, all the others must follow suit or risk losing jobs and thus disappointing their consituents. However, government cannot generate wealth independently. Consequently, all the capital they provide private corporations comes from other private corporations/citizens. So the government forces its constituents to indirectly assume the risk for all such projects. When they fail, as a majority do, all tax payers suffer. When tax payers suffer the government is forced to respond to their needs which in turn creates more problems. Ultimately, governmental power grows along with the problems they create.
Assuming you agree with the author you must have some leftist sympathies so I am surprised that you would argue in favor of a blantant rationalization for corporate welfare.
Why do you need it refuted for you? Can’t you do it? If the investment in question is value-productive, consumers will be willing to buy it and capitalists need do no more than pool their funds. If they haven’t got the funds or the funds are serving more urgent wants, then savings will be necessary first. If not, then it is a waste of funds, period. How does the government even know this? Absent the price mechanism, it does not, and its decisions are nothing but pure arbitrary imposition. There goes his argument down the drain. A business is free to go whine to the government that consumers are neglecting what they “really” need and that government should therefore force them to shift their priorities… but not in the name of economic sanity.
-Jon
It certainly does create wealth for him.
Are you saying that government bureaucrats are wise enough to know which technology should be invested in and which technology shouldn’t be invested in? That’s like saying that the trillions of dollars and millions of lives we’ve wasted in wars and for NASA have actually been paid back by the relatively small technological advancements they’ve brought.
But, we beat the damn commies and that’s all that matters.
The unproven (and frankly non sequiturial) has no need to be disproved.