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It's so simple, even a Libertarian should understand. However, they need to give up the Dogma that government should get out of the way of innovation and embrace the reality that Government paves the way for innovation.
Without government funding, very few ideas get off the ground. Not even the iPhone would be around today were it not for your Tax dollars kicking it off.
'The Entrepreneurial State': Apple Didn't Build Your iPhone; Your Taxes Did | The Business Desk with Paul Solman | PBS NewsHour | PBS
Without government funding, very few ideas get off the ground. Not even the iPhone would be around today were it not for your Tax dollars kicking it off.
'The Entrepreneurial State': Apple Didn't Build Your iPhone; Your Taxes Did | The Business Desk with Paul Solman | PBS NewsHour | PBS
Mission-oriented public investment put men on the moon, and later, lead to the invention and commercialization of the Internet, which in turn has stimulated growth in many sectors of the economy. Indeed, as I describe in the longest chapter of my book, the U.S. government has been a leading player in funding not only the Internet but all the other technologies -- GPS, touchscreen display, and the new Siri voice-activated personal assistant -- that make the iPhone, for example, a miracle of American technology.
...when Pfizer recently closed down a large R&D lab in Sandwich, Kent, and transferred it to Boston, Massachusetts, it was not due to the lower taxes or laxer regulation for which industry is constantly lobbying. They moved because of the large amounts of money that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been spending on research and the mission of improved health care in the United States: $792 billion from 1936-2011 (in 2011 dollars), with $30.9 billion in 2012 alone.
These lessons are important for policy makers interested in fostering entrepreneurship. While Steve Jobs was a genius in his ability to exploit existing government-funded technologies in new ways, he would have had little to work with absent massive public spending.