Missing Forest
The largest subsidies come in the form of tax write offs for all forms of research and the loans we give to banks and financial institutions. Does anyone think we got a good deal in the money we gave...
View ArticleI see that bet and raise.
Perhaps this shows my abysmal economic illiteracy, but my thought that the private sector, which was under no obligation to do so, sank twice as much money into the venture as did the government, which...
View ArticleDoes Charles Lane Think Drivers of Cars are More Stupid than Investors in Cars?
Funny how that works. Eager beaver pundits like Charles Lane cherry picking obvious failures like Fisker Automotive designed to highlight not only government itself as a failure but its uncanny power...
View ArticleVCs are (frequently) crappy VCs
It is amazing how much of a beating the federal government gets when it acts as an investor. (Never mind that China, everybody's favorite capitalist country, does this on a HUGE scale). First, as you...
View ArticleSeward's Folly
... new transformative technologies are often, not always slow out of the starting gate. Da Vinci invented the helicopter but it took 500 years to get from concept to working models, without government...
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Holy Externality! [quote]However government programs of this sort will always have to deal with the enormous ideological bias of the media. [/quote] What is the cost of Fox News and The Washington Post...
View ArticleThey owe 192 Out of 529
Overall I think you make a good point and caution should be used. But at the same time these programs are vital to innovation. It disappoints me there is over 50 billion of funds sitting in this very...
View ArticleAddendum
And yet republicans go on this week and meet the press and tout Medicare part d as a huge success because their is less demand for pharmas due to generics and lack of innovation and that cost us...
View ArticleThat's the problem with patents
The government is terrible at issuing patents. Each patent is a so-called designated winner. But most patents cost more jobs than they create, unless you're a lawyer. - Scott Dunn
View ArticleMackay called it right
This democratic socialism idea, borrowed from the state capitalism of the 30s, is a very bad idea. He was referring to government control of our health care, but the issue is wider than that. The issue...
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[b]pete[/b] blithered, [quote]This democratic socialism idea, borrowed from the state capitalism of the 30s, is a very bad idea. He was referring to government control of our health care, but the issue...
View ArticleI'm with pete
"The issue isnt whether the govt. can get lucky or not, it is the intertwining of the players and the government, the inevitable corruption. The incentive for a government worker is far different than...
View ArticleLiberal, I think you prove my point..
As Dean has pointed out, nurses and doctors are indeed receiving rents in the u.s., yet another special interest group benefiting from government. It would probably be more efficient in the u.s. to go...
View Articlemore unnecessary negativity
we should expect Lane to be far more insightful...were his analysis and summary centered around excessive executive compensation and/or corruption or similar malfeasance, his singling out of Fisker...
View Articlecorruption
Pete says: [quote]he issue isnt whether the govt. can get lucky or not, it is the intertwining of the players and the government, the inevitable corruption[/quote] But the players don't need no...
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"... $529 million in low-interest loans from the government in 2009." Don't think that's accurate. It was more like a $529 million line of credit that Fisker could draw on if it met certain criteria....
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[quote]It would probably be more efficient in the u.s. to go back to a state run system, dumping medicare and medicaid. This would be comparable to Europe. While smaller governments are not free from...
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According to the NYT (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/venture-capitals-sluggish-performance/) VC has only about a 6% return to capital over the last decade, and half of them make a loss. On the...
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