SOTU: Spend More Money

[Quantum Windbag]

Spend more money?

What money?

Aren't we already flat broke?

We haven't been that rich for decades.

 

[Londoner]

The computer came out of the Cold War Pentagon. And what about the interstate system, or the great public works infrastructure programs, or the energy, water, and transportation projects that created suburban America in the 50s and 60s? They all represent government investments which have driven commerce for the last 1/2 century. For God's sake, the southwest would not exist without the Hoover Dam -- aka government investment in America. The 80s consumer electronics revolution came straight from the Space program. What about the greatest government spending artifice of all time: WWII. Do you know who or what funded and organized WWII war manufacturing? Do you understand the concept of military Keynesianism? How much do you know about Boeing's history, specifically the funding, research and resulting commercial airline industry? How much do you know about biotechnology, specifically the research and subsidies that created it? Your blessed "private" free market system has been collectively funded from the beginning. Your blessed capitalism has socialized the cost-&-risk while privatizing the profit from the beginning.

You have been lied to.

Stop listening to talk radio.

 

[The Rabbi]

"The computer" would be nothing without Microsoft or Apple or Gateway or a hundred other companies that made them fast, affordable and ubiquitous.
The interstate system is probably the one gov't project that actually had a return. In the meantime we've had synfuels, shale oil projects, and a million other do-nothing wasteful programs by the government billed as "investment." What are the chances that any program Obama proposes (remember "shovel ready projects"?) will be of the interstate type vs the synfuels type?
I don't want government investing my money. I want government doing what it is constitutionally mandated to do and stay the hell out of my life.