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Why We Need Government Funding For R&D

calamity

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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

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.
 
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

government backed innovation wasn't first for public consumption but for military use. It was the public that picked and chosen what innovation was profitable for public consumption and adapted the innovation for just that
the market dictated profitable innovation not government
 
I heard a lot of scientists want to leave America, because of the lack of funds.. That is pretty bad. And we even complain about a national shortage of scientists.
 
So basically the point of the OP is that government spending causes dependence on that spending. Yes, government made itself the key cog in the machine of innovation and as you would expect most innovations come from government subsidy. Surprise? I bet no one ever said that would happen? Oh right, they did. Go figure. The best part is the problem basically feeds itself and gets worse as time goes on, but then, that is usually how government works, isn't it? :lol:

I find it pretty funny that the same people raging against corporate welfare support government subsidized innovation. :lamo Hint: They're the same thing.
 
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I heard a lot of scientists want to leave America, because of the lack of funds.. That is pretty bad. And we even complain about a national shortage of scientists.

Yes, countries from around the world subsidize innovation and provide scientists with work and resources.
 
Yes, countries from around the world subsidize innovation and provide scientists with work and resources.

great inventers like Thomas Edison, Wright brothers, Nikola Tesla, Guglielmo Marconi didn't not receive government funding their motivating was profit now they sold some of their inventions to government. Government funding is not required for innovation
 
I heard a lot of scientists want to leave America, because of the lack of funds.. That is pretty bad. And we even complain about a national shortage of scientists.

Good. If their research can't be profitable, let it be done elsewhere. I don't want any more of my money being sent to people like my sister-in-law to play with fruit flies for the last decade.
 
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

Neither putting men on the Moon nor the Internet were examples of government funding of private R&D. Neither is GPS, neither was voice-activation. (Not sure about the development of touch screens; GM first implemented them in Buicks in 1988.) Those were all technologies developed by the government for government purposes, which -- uh oh -- trickled down to the private sector.
 
Neither putting men on the Moon nor the Internet were examples of government funding of private R&D. Neither is GPS, neither was voice-activation. (Not sure about the development of touch screens; GM first implemented them in Buicks in 1988.) Those were all technologies developed by the government for government purposes, which -- uh oh -- trickled down to the private sector.
Putting men on the moon wasn't an example of government funding...what?
 
Read what I said:
Really? I suggest you read up on that.
Saturn V - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Saturn V (pronounced "Saturn Five") was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA's Apollo and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973. A multistage liquid-fueled launch vehicle, NASA launched 13 Saturn Vs from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida with no loss of crew or payload. It remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status and still holds the record for heaviest payload launched and heaviest payload capacity to Low Earth orbit (LEO).

The largest production model of the Saturn family of rockets, the Saturn V was designed under the direction of Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with Boeing, North American Aviation, Douglas Aircraft Company, and IBM as the lead contractors.
What exactly do you call lead contractors?
 
Government contractors doing government work. Not recipients of R&D grants for their own work.

("Read up on that," indeed. Few who weren't involved in it know more about Project Apollo than I do.)
Times have changed. We now give block grants to private enterprise instead of doing the work on governments behalf. The latter has been deemed to be socialism.
 
Times have changed. We now give block grants to private enterprise instead of doing the work on governments behalf. The latter has been deemed to be socialism.

Even if true, it has zero bearing on anything I said. I suppose this is where you abandon your own OP again.
 
Even if true, it has zero bearing on anything I said. I suppose this is where you abandon your own OP again.

No. Gvt funding for new and radical ideas is essential. I abandon nothing. I reject your argument that gvt did not fund the R&D behind the moon launch.
 
Step 1: Steal the profits from companies so that they cannot afford to do any research or development.
Step 2: Show artificial interest in R&D by giving a small percentage of those taxes back as grants.
Step 3: Get the ignorant lemmings to believe that without Government, R&D wouldn't exist.

I ain't falling for it.
 
No. Gvt funding for new and radical ideas is essential. I abandon nothing. I reject your argument that gvt did not fund the R&D behind the moon launch.

I reject any notion that you understand plain English, then, because I never said they didn't. What I DID say is plain enough to anyone with a fourth grade reading level.

Your OP gives examples of government funding of its own programs to bolster the idea of government being essential for private R&D. If you can't see how that's a conceptual problem for its premise, I can't help you.
 
Step 1: Steal the profits from companies so that they cannot afford to do any research or development.
Step 2: Show artificial interest in R&D by giving a small percentage of those taxes back as grants.
Step 3: Get the ignorant lemmings to believe that without Government, R&D wouldn't exist.

I ain't falling for it.

Similar to busting up horizontal trusts and then claiming that without government, businesses couldn't survive. Example: car companies "can't" build roads for their cars to drive on. Indeed they could, only it would be illegal under anti-trust law.
 
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

Wow. You really love you some government.
 
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