Big Government Built This Country

[cutter]

Big Business built this country. All the things that big business built from the automobile, factories, Railroads, airlines, etc were built cheaper and more efficiently that if the than if the government had done it. It isn't until the government tries to control the industries that they get all screwed up. The government just wants to take credit for the great Nation that big business built

 

[Toronado3800]

Let's oppose the big government idea for a moment with facts not angry bumper sticker name calling.

The affordable automobile was created by business not created by big government.

The transcontinental railroad was created by VERY BIG government.

Interesting though, can't even build a stupid baseball stadium with capitalism anymore though....

Well. I guess I will speak for the small government folks.

Private industry has given us reality tv.

Come on! Give me a non-government funded wonder we have since the automobile.

Wasn't Joe Robbie Stadium built with almost 100% private funds? That counts for something. Makes me a Dolphins fan like every lover of small government should be. Damn Yankees Stadium II is a welfare eating duck if I have read right so don't go watching that team.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

The OP is just a straw man argument on its face. The projects mentioned were not due to "big government" they were due to their sustained economic viability. Unlike the bloated pie in the sky, pipe dream crap we have seen coming out of Washington for the last 30 years or so.

 

[Stephanie]

The OP is just a straw man argument on its face. The projects mentioned were not due to "big government" they were due to their sustained economic viability. Unlike the bloated pie in the sky, pipe dream crap we have seen coming out of Washington for the last 30 years or so.

I just had to shake my head while reading the OP posting and wonder, do people really believe that.

 

[Toronado3800]

The OP is just a straw man argument on its face. The projects mentioned were not due to "big government" they were due to their sustained economic viability. Unlike the bloated pie in the sky, pipe dream crap we have seen coming out of Washington for the last 30 years or so.

The TVA wasn't big government because it made sense?

The Hoover Dam project pre-dates FDR. I remember it being contracted out by the government to a group of companies and then turned back over to the government. Sounds like more big government...

The Erie canal was funded by the legislature and thought up partially by a man while in debtors prison in Canada. Interesting.

Interstate Highways are federal projects now. I will assume they were in the fifties.

All these things were obviously good ideas in retrospect. Still big government though. Think the Dam was done before schedule at least.

 

[Londoner]

The PEOPLE of this country came up with the ideas, inventions, MONEY to make it what it is.

Exactly Steph! People run government. Reagan very strategically convinced a generation of conservatives that corrupt, incompetent demons run government (not people). He did this to lower the tax and regulatory burden on the people who put him in power. Let me explain. The biggest threat to his movement was that you might figure out that actual good Americans managed the building of this country's infrastructure -- actual good people filled the government which defeated the Nazis, built the Hoover Dam, and put a man on the moon. Reagan de-emphasized the good people in Government for a very simple reason: if you trusted government -- if you focused on the positive things government did to build this country -- you might trust it to solve, say, the energy crisis, and this would raise taxes on the folks who put him in power; it would also threaten the market share of his Big Oil donors. Therefore, he created an anti-government ideology so you wouldn't give Washington the power that was given to the Big Government Progressives & Liberals who lorded over decades of economically vital infrastructure projects.

Reagan needed to obscure the positive things Big Government did so he could hand the economy to special interests. Remember: he was a politician (-one of the best ever). The result of Reagan's strategic distortion was that we trusted special interests with our energy future -- interests which had a financial incentive to downplay any data which suggested that the demand for oil might some day outstrip the supply by a factor which would destroy the economy. And he destroyed the alternative & conservation movements, who begged him to realize that we needed to slowly move toward less petrol-intensive systems. The result of giving energy to special interests has lead to the greatest misallocation of resources in this nation's history. While Europe and Asia were building smaller cars and high speed rail, America built gas guzzlers and massive, sprawling, big box, energy sucking suburbs. When gas prices rise, the US suffers the most because the market sold people on a way of life which included unsustainably high energy consummation. This is what happens when you let those concerned only with short term profit manage a long term public utility. They milk the cow until they have enough money to parachute into dynastic privilege. They use their financial leverage to crush competition and suppress any science which hurts their interest.

Reagan got America to mistrust government at precisely the time we needed a moonshot around creating less oil-intensive systems -- he did this so he could take care of big oil. He did this so there would be less upward pressure on taxes. [Had the progressives and liberals done likewise, modern America would not have been built] Reagan also failed to lead on energy because he didn't have the political courage to ask Americans to make sacrifices. He promised them morning in America and handed out credit cards and tax breaks. He basically asked us to go shopping while Rome burned and our energy future was handed to terrorist nations. He protected a small group of special interests and in-so-doing he dug our grave.

Make no mistake. Reagan's anti-government ideology was done to enrich the few at the expense of the future. Does this mean government is perfect. God no. Markets are far better than bureaucrats at allocating resources, but there are limits to the faith we should have in any one idol.

 

[Stephanie]

LOL, that Reagan, he be all powerful.

He got a WHOLE COUNTRY to mistrust Guberment.

how bout that.

 

[Dot Com]

Big government has taxpayers to thank for their largess. Remember that.

Exactly. We win when our tax dollars go to a project which provides utilities which expand the size and productivity of the nation. We lose when a political party tries to erase history in order to protect the interests of a small group of tax payers. This nation required a moonshot around conservation and alternative energy in the 70s, but it was lied to by a party which had been captured by big oil. This party convinced Americans that an "energy moonshot" was impossible because Big Government was too incompetent. Rather than being honest about the amazing accomplishments of Big Government, they lied in order to protect special interests.

We are now lying in the bed they made.

oh brother. The PEOPLE of this country came up with the ideas, inventions, MONEY to make it what it is. Your dumb Big Government was the reason is pure bullshit and rather pathetic. But hey, you could probably convince SOME people of it.

You're your usual partisan self tonight. WTF is your problemo young lady?

 

[Stephanie]

Exactly. We win when our tax dollars go to a project which provides utilities which expand the size and productivity of the nation. We lose when a political party tries to erase history in order to protect the interests of a small group of tax payers. This nation required a moonshot around conservation and alternative energy in the 70s, but it was lied to by a party which had been captured by big oil. This party convinced Americans that an "energy moonshot" was impossible because Big Government was too incompetent. Rather than being honest about the amazing accomplishments of Big Government, they lied in order to protect special interests.

We are now lying in the bed they made.

oh brother. The PEOPLE of this country came up with the ideas, inventions, MONEY to make it what it is. Your dumb Big Government was the reason is pure bullshit and rather pathetic. But hey, you could probably convince SOME people of it.

You're your usual partisan self tonight. WTF is your problemo young lady?

It is REALLY any of your business.?
Didn't think so.

 

[whitehall]

If the today's GOP was in charge during the postwar years, you would never have had the Hoover Dam or the great hydroelectric power projects conducted by Tennessee Valley Authority; you would never have had the BIG GOVERNMENT Interstate Project or the BIG GOVERNMENT Space Program (which was responsible the 80s consumer electronics boom). All these things were born of Big Government; all of them required massive spending; and all of them created the foundation for a 1/2 century of economic growth.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican if the Southwest in its current form would even exist without the Hoover Dam, and they will stare at you blankly.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican what enabled the southeastern United States to have the cheapest electricity costs in the 50s and 60s, and how postwar infrastructure projects lead to unprecedented economic growth from Tennessee to Georgia, and they will stare at you blankly.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican who harnessed the power and water of the Colorado and what that meant for economic growth in the desert southwest and California, and they will stare at you blankly. ["Wait a minute Jethro, I thought water come from God"]

Ask a Talk Radio Republican how the Big Government interstate system enabled the trucking industry to ship goods all across the country, thus creating an explosion of economic activity that would have otherwise been impossible, and they will stare at you blankly.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican how the Big Government Erie Canal project put cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica on the map, and they will stare at you blankly.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican how the Big Government Space Program made America the world leader in consumer electronics, and they will stare at you blankly. [Ask them who enabled the private profits of GE or Lockhead Martin, or any company that depends on roads and electrical grids and water and government research and government subsidies and military intervention RE global resource markets, and they will stare at you blankly. Corporations have been parasites on Big Government and the tax payer since the beginning. Their current war on government is based on the fact that they don't want to acknowledge their massive debt to society]

Do you know what happened once Reagan and Movement Conservatism took over the country in 1980? They said government couldn't do anything. [I'm surprised Reagan didn't doctor the history books to say the moon landing never happened because Big Government can't do anything]. Once Reagan convinced America that Government couldn't do anything, we stopped all the big projects that made this the Greatest Nation in history. No more Hoover Dams, no more grand infrastructure projects that put whole regions on the map. When Carter said we needed to build a moonshot around alternative energy to avoid getting bankrupted in the middle east -- bankrupted by the $5 gallon; bankrupted by having to stabilize places like Iraq and Afghanistan -- Reagan convinced the nation that the Government who defeated the Nazis wasn't fit to run a laundromat. Sorry Mr. Reagan, but Big Government put a man on the moon and lead the greatest manufacturing boom in history (see WWII war manufacturing, the largest government spending program in history, which laid the foundation for America's most sustained economic growth during the 50s and 60s) -- meaning: we could have gotten out of the middle east, but we chose to listen to a president who was funded by big oil, a president who chose to enrich special interests at the expense of future generations. We gave up on trying to solve big problems as a nation. Instead, we trusted the market, which chose to swindle the nation with CDOs, Swaps, and Derivatives rather than invest in the real economy. We got punk'd.

America swallowed poison in 1980 when it traded the Government who built the Hoover Dam for the government who trusted corporations to follow greed into whatever corrupt enclave yielded the highest short term profits. Who knew they would loot the treasury (by taking systemic criminal risk), and then use their loot to convince a generation of Conservatives that they stood for freedom.

Republican Voters know not what they do.

Come on Brit, you have to know that your generalization has more holes in it than Obama's birth certificate. Nixon was president when the moon landings took place. LBJ created the "great society" and the VietNam war. How did that work out? Republican president Eisenhower established the gigantic federal Interstate roadway systems that we enjoy today. Quit bitchin about the republican party and tell us what magnificent projects this neo-socialist democrat administration has planned. Windmills? A two thousand page law that is so full of graft and corruption that it can scarcely be called a Health Care law? How about Cash for Clunkers, that's good for a laugh anyway.

 

[The Gadfly]

If Big Government spending were the Salvation of Humanity, the Stimulus Bill and two years of deficit spending would have sent job creation through the roof...but, you know...

Who said anything about salvation??? Government does some things well, and other things poorly. The anti-government hysteria promoted by Movement Conservatism lacks credibility because it under-reports the accomplishments of Big Government. It does this to lower the tax burden on the interests which have captured it, not because government can't do anything well.

As for the stimulus. That was a trojan horse of tax cuts, and it was mostly used to keep the states running. It was also far too timid because Obama is weak. The Great Depression didn't end until the greatest government spending project in history- war spending for WWII, which stimulated multi-decade growth in manufacturing.

It's insane to occupy any extreme, i.e., "government can do everything", or, "government can do nothing". The Reagan Revolution devolved into the extreme position that government can do nothing. This lead to a bipartisan 30 year hollowing out of government agencies, leading to the capture of one regulatory body after another. Consequently, the fox was watching the hen house when AIG, Lehman, Goldman, and Bear burned trillions in a derivatives ponzi scheme. My point: the Right has convinced a vocal minority of talk radio listeners that government should have no regulatory function. This extreme position contributed to the financial destruction of the country.

I am suggesting that we need some balance because most talk radio republicans are not told about the major role Big Government had in building modern America. Perhaps if they knew, the public debate would not be clogged with such unproductive extremes.

Couple of problems with your little theory:
A, I don't listen to talk radio; I can think for myself, thank you.
B. I am not republican; I am anti-democrat. There is a difference.
C. IF you had actually studied economics, you would know that the New Deal failed to get us out of the Great Depression, and that, had it not been for WW II, it would have gone down as a spectacular failure, of dubious legality and constitutionality.
D. Trying to tax and spend your way out of a recession is about as effective as standing in a bucket, grabbing the handle, and trying to lift yourself. I can't remember who said that, but it's true, nonetheless.

 

[Londoner]

I'd like a link to a credible source for that.

The 70s marked an important watershed. Postwar prosperity had finally run aground, and the oil shock exposed America's deep vulnerability to a resource it could not dependably control or safeguard for the future. No other nation identified as much with the car -- big gas guzzlers and long commutes to massive houses and shopping malls. No other nation had invested as much in big sprawling, energy sucking suburbs. America was built around the dream of an infinite supply of cheap oil.

The oil shock hit at precisely the time the Reagan Movement was preparing itself to hand all government functions to business. For the anti-government reformers who were slowly infiltrating Washington under Nixon, the energy crisis posed a very serious challenge. How could they respond effectively to this crisis without increasing the power of the federal government? The establishment (or Big Government "elites"), i.e., the ones who guided the country through its most prosperous years; the ones who believed in the Big Government who built the Hoover Dam and Interstate System -- they wanted to build a moonshot around not getting trapped in Arab quicksand or Canadian tar sands. Problem is: big oil wanted market share, and the wealthy wanted lower taxes. So we spent the 80s building suburban shopping malls so we could go shopping. Welcome to Morning in America, paid for by Master Card and Visa, as the country headed blindly toward an energy disaster.

But to answer your question. Pick up a copy of "Rightward Bound. Making America Conservative in the 70s". There is a chapter dedicated to how the right handled the energy crisis at both the level of policy and ideology. More broadly, the book shows how the right finally broke the New Deal coalition, and began the long task of moving government away from things like energy, transportation, and finance. They claimed to be turning these things over to market mechanisms, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest they were just laying the foundation to ultimately hand them over to special interests, who would eventually purchase elections, staff government, and capture regulators. Ultimately, the book is well balanced because there are a number of compelling essays which focus on the positive things the movement achieved.

 

[whitehall]

I'd like a link to a credible source for that.

The 70s marked an important watershed. Postwar prosperity had finally run aground, and the oil shock exposed America's deep vulnerability to a resource it could not dependably control or safeguard for the future. No other nation identified as much with the car -- big gaze guzzlers in fact. No other nation had invested as much in big sprawling, energy sucking suburbs. America was built around the dream of an infinite supply of cheap oil.

The oil shock hit at precisely the time the Reagan Movement was preparing itself to hand all government functions to business. For the anti-government reformers who were slowly infiltrating Washington under Nixon, the energy crisis posed a very serious challenge. How could they respond effectively to this crisis without increasing the power of the federal government? The establishment (or Big Government "elites"), i.e., the ones who guided the country through its most prosperous years; the ones who believed in the Big Government who built the Hoover Dam and Interstate System -- they wanted to build a moonshot around not getting trapped in Arab quicksand or Canadian tar sands. Problem is: big oil wanted market share, and the wealthy wanted lower taxes. So the we spent the 80s building suburban shopping malls so we could go shopping. Morning in America paid for by Master Card and Visa, as the country headed blindly toward an energy disaster.

But to answer your question. Pick up a copy of "Rightward Bound. Making America Conservative in the 70s". There is a chapter dedicated to how the right handled the energy crisis at both the level of policy and ideology. More broadly, the book shows how the right finally broke the New Deal coalition, and began the long task of moving government away from things like energy, transportation, and finance. They claimed to be turning these things over to market mechanisms, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest they were just laying the foundation to ultimately hand them over to special interests, who would eventually purchase elections, staff government, and capture regulators. Ultimately, the book is well balanced because there are a number of compelling essays which focus on the positive things the movement achieved.

Generalities about American political parties are worthy of middle school kids who are educated by the rabble who rioted in Wisconsin or ignorant foreigners. The reason the US is "trapped in Arab quicksand" is democrat/socialist policies which kept the US dependent on foreign oil. I detest foreign rif-raff who characterize the American economic system and electoral system based on a book they probably stole out of a bookstore.

 

[Charles_Main]

Big Government Built This Country

utter and complete Nonsense.

This country was built by the blood sweet and tears of the American people, on the backs of Farmers, and Entrepreneurs and Business people not afraid to take a risk. On the backs of the American worker, and the Innovators. That is what Built this country. Big Government has never done anything but stand in the way, and Fuck it all up.

 

[Londoner]

Couple of problems with your little theory:
A, I don't listen to talk radio; I can think for myself, thank you.
B. I am not republican; I am anti-democrat. There is a difference.
C. IF you had actually studied economics, you would know that the New Deal failed to get us out of the Great Depression, and that, had it not been for WW II, it would have gone down as a spectacular failure, of dubious legality and constitutionality.
D. Trying to tax and spend your way out of a recession is about as effective as standing in a bucket, grabbing the handle, and trying to lift yourself. I can't remember who said that, but it's true, nonetheless.

This is scary.

First. I agree that the New Deal was no match for the Great Depression, and probably prolonged it. But I wasn't talking strictly about the New Deal, which is why in the post of mine you quoted I say that government spending on war manufacturing ("military Keynesianism") was the only stimulus large enough to prime the manufacturing pump.

While I kind of agree with your point about the New Deal, I'm a little worried about the simplicity of your conclusions, which mimics the sort of rhetoric you hear from say a Bill O'Reilly, who also claims to be independent, but is an Apparatchik for the Right Wing Machine.

I'm not sure the New Deal was all bad in quite the monolithic way you suggest. New Deal work programs rescued Reagan's father. Some people think FDRs "spending" (investment) in struggling families paid off. You forget that Reagan was a staunch New Dealer until the crude Keynesians and welfare nuts moved it off the map (not to mention the anti-war, civil rights, feminazis who came along later)

Worse: you seem to make no distinction between programs and regulations which did some good (TVA, Glass-Stegall), and ones which were abysmal failures, like the National Recovery Administration, or the lingering political stench created by corrupt Big City Democratic Machines. At the very least you might want to add some nuances to your conclusions. Even Milton Friedman praises some of the Keynesian approaches FDR deployed during the Great Depression. In fact, he had great respect for Keynes; he thought Maynard would have been disgusted by the crudeness with which both parties used his ideas.

Worse: in your haste to ignore my post and spew some very tired bumper stickers of Movement Conservatism, you didn't address my main point, which is far less ambitious than defending the New Deal in all its sprawling, unruly complexity. I was and am suggesting that some of the Big Government projects of the Progressive and Liberal era were vital to the economic development of modern America. Frankly, most of my college educated friends on the Right don't dispute what is a truly a meek and uninteresting conclusion. The only people who cannot see the relationship between Big Government Spending -- on [things like] the Hoover Dam, Interstate System, TVA, the Space Program -- and economic growth are folks educated by Movement Conservatism, which radically under-reports these facts for political reasons.

Your anti New Deal sentiments are like your anti-spending sentiments -- they seem too simple. You might consider adding some nuance, i.e., perhaps you should separate government spending on pork from government spending on the Hoover Dam, or the development of the internet, like when JCR Licklider of MIT worked with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a global network of computers. Or you might separate spending on "bridges to nowhere" from spending on the development of computer technology at places like the Aberdeen Ballistic Research Laboratory.

While you're not a Republican, you seem to have been infected by the rightwing mythology that Big Government research and spending has played no role in the development of the country's most vital infrastructure and technology. This is scary because it means that Movement conservatism is literally re-writing history.

 

[Londoner]

Generalities about American political parties are worthy of middle school kids who are educated by the rabble who rioted in Wisconsin or ignorant foreigners. The reason the US is "trapped in Arab quicksand" is democrat/socialist policies which kept the US dependent on foreign oil. I detest foreign rif-raff who characterize the American economic system and electoral system based on a book they probably stole out of a bookstore.

This is exactly what I'm saying about the Rightwing influence on political dialogue, which has devolved into strategically misplaced rage at "The Government" (as opposed to the corporate interests which own and control government). First you criticize my generalities about political parties (which is fair), but then you say vague generalities like "democrat/socialist policies" without clarifying exactly how this is meant in the context of late 1970s energy policy, where Carter wanted to move us slowly away from our over-investment in petroleum, and Reagan wanted to up our military presence in the middle east, thereby increasing our investment and dependency in petroleum.

Regarding the socialist pot shot, you might be right, but I don't know how you intend it. The mainstream Democratic Party is controlled by people like Bill Clinton who are far to the right of FDR, who like Keynes, believed in markets and individual ownership, but wanted to soften the edges of the business cycle and unemployment. This is a far cry from government owning the means of production. The failure of the talk radio right to distinguish between postwar Keynesianism and socialism is nothing short of disastrous. It means the political debate is being clogged by unproductive distortions.

Regarding my generalities. I must concede that the parties are not so easy to define or even distinguish. However, I don't think it is a provocative conclusion to say that the Right was much more opposed to federal intervention in the energy crisis than the left. The Right very much wanted to take power away from the federal government -- which is why they had no problem handing energy policy to corporations (-the same corporations who want to use the Pentagon (i.e., tax payer) to stabilize the middle east and thus cement American dependency on the black gold, as opposed to increasing our investment in [things like] the electric car). This is not to say that Carter did not support an "oil forward" policy in the Middle East. Please recall the Carter Doctrine. I'm just saying that Carter was famous for predicting that this would eventually lead to disaster, which is why he asked the nation to build a moonshot around alternative energy and conservation (i.e., using less!) -- both of which would diminish daily oil consumption and thereby lessen our middle east dependency, as well as our vulnerability to oil shocks and the coming $6 gallon. Reagan was famous for calling Carter a "sky-is-falling" Lefty who was strategically exaggerating the problems of middle east dependency for the purpose of expanding the power of Big Government over America's energy habits. The nation sided with Reagan, who ignored oil scarcity warnings as so much Lefty tripe. He also upped the military ante significantly in the middle east, and initiated a 30 year misallocation of resources in a myth: cheap oil. Had we taken an even moderate approach to conservation and alternative energy, we could have, over 30 years, developed a slightly less petrol-intensive system. This would have diminished our exposure to the economic nightmare ahead, where rising energy costs will exact the most punitive costs from the world's most oil-dependent nation. That is to say: we swallowed poison in 1980.

Problem is: a generation of conservatives have been drugged to love Reagan uncritically -- so there is no way to discuss any of this. [It's both tragic and ironic because, at the end of the day, the Rightwing loves its government heroes more than any other political demographic. They cried when Reagan spoke of the Evil Empire. They didn't notice that he was selling weapons to terrorists and driving America into an energy ditch which would compromise the future of many generations]

 

[Londoner]

Come on Brit, you have to know that your generalization has more holes in it than Obama's birth certificate. Nixon was president when the moon landings took place. LBJ created the "great society" and the VietNam war. How did that work out? Republican president Eisenhower established the gigantic federal Interstate roadway systems that we enjoy today.

I'm only half brit, raised on outskirts of London, moved to states for college, then back to London. Patents mixed: US/Brit. Dual citizenship.

Nixon and Eisenhower are, from a policy perspective, much closer to New Deal liberals than today's GOP. I'd take either Nixon or Ike over Carter, Clinton, & Obama. Those great Republicans believed that Big Government could productively spend tax dollars on public infrastructure. Their predecessors were captured by interests who didn't want the tax burden that come with investment in the country's infrastructure or energy future.

 

[The Rabbi]

Big Government Programs:
Oil shale
Wind/alt energy
Ethanol
Great Society/War on Poverty
War on Drugs
Vietnam War
1970s Wage and Price Controls
WIN Buttons
Obamacare
Public schools


Private corp contributions:
Automobile
Machine gun
Light bulb
PC computer
Vaccines
Treatments for:
Cancer
Diabetes
Heart disease
Cataract surgery
etc
Refrigerators
Dish Washers
Washing machines/dryers
Air conditioning
Records, cassette tapes, cd's
Stereo

Even where gov't programs invented something, it was the private sector that made it applicable to consumers and affordable.
So basically the OP is pure big gov bullshit by one ofthe biggest bullshitters on this site.

 

[editec]

If I were to characterize exactly why this nation became great?

I'd say that government working in conjunction with capital, plus the fact that this nation had an entirely NEW continent to harvest, built up this nation's ability to create wealth to the point when industrialization really began to make (not just this nation, but every industrializing nation) wealthier that humankind had ever been.

And then we had to go through a period where that newfound wealth needed a more just system of social distribution. That change in the social contract mostly happened because of UNIONISM and FEDERALISM.

The combination of new wealth and a new way of distributing that wealth, created a vibrant middle class whose consuming power actually launched even more new wealth as capital was invested to respond to the growing market that the middle class created.

CAPITAL and LABOR when working in harmony, can create enormous wealth and even more wealth will be created if that output of labor adn capital is WISELY dispursed between consumption and capital formation

The boomer generation probably enjoyed the outcome of that economic history more than any other generation of Americans ever did, or ever will again, too.

 

[Toronado3800]

Big Government Programs:
Oil shale
Wind/alt energy
Ethanol
Great Society/War on Poverty
War on Drugs
Vietnam War
1970s Wage and Price Controls
WIN Buttons
Obamacare
Public schools


Private corp contributions:
Automobile
Machine gun
Light bulb
PC computer
Vaccines
Treatments for:
Cancer
Diabetes
Heart disease
Cataract surgery
etc
Refrigerators
Dish Washers
Washing machines/dryers
Air conditioning
Records, cassette tapes, cd's
Stereo

Even where gov't programs invented something, it was the private sector that made it applicable to consumers and affordable.
So basically the OP is pure big gov bullshit by one ofthe biggest bullshitters on this site.

While I may disagree thank you for a list.

Does federal funding for medical research just make the headlines more than it should because of the controversial issues? What percentage of medical research do you suppose is provided by the government? Is it usually the research which is more long term/less immediately profitable the government/we fund?