If you wish to remain a first world country you spend on the right things. It is called investing.
Investing into a third world shit hole for over a decade is what republicans do. Idiots. Want to talk about wasteful spending...
Did Henry Ford and Alexander Bell and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs get govt funding to develop and invent?
Govt "investing" rarely has good results, can you spell Solyndra?
Don't know about where(the four men above) they got their start up money. Have to look it up.
There is no doubt that all four had government contracts at various points in time. Which was a good thing to have if you were talking to bankers about borrowing money.
Money which probably was created in a Federal Reserve bank. Which has the full faith and credit of the government behind it.
SO did they get government funding? Only kinda. If they borrowed the money.
But I think it strange that all four of those men you mentioned would certainly fall in the plutocrat class, but they were/are not plutocrats. Matter of fact they all had or have more of a populist bent.
Something of which todays repubs know nothing about.
Yet you chose them for your example.
Why?