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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (110954)	2/1/2008 3:40:52 PM
From: GuinnessGuy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Wayne, you wrote- "However, if we looked at the total pool of money invested by government and then looked at the return on that capital, my guess is that it wouldn't be very high because government made so many bad investments (most likely as as a result of making political decisions instead of economic ones)." Tell me how we calculate, for example, the return in the initiative to build the national highway system? Tell me how we calculate the return on the air travel infrastructure that was largely paid for with taxpayer's money. Tell me how we calculate the return on having a gov't run military rather than one run by corporations? Perhaps you are suggesting that using taxpayer money to fund fire departments across the country is a far worse idea than having it done privately, like the health care system. As far as gov't investing in new technologies, tell me that the private sector would have done the same thing even though a payoff might have been ten or 20 or more years down the road. You and I both know that investors won't tolerate investments that are too far out in time or considered to be too likely to fail. I think you and I disagree because of one basic premise, and that is you think the gov't will always make bad choices when it comes to investing resources. I say that sometimes that is true but others times the gov't is in a position to make better choices. Have you ever heard the expression,'"if you don't eat your own lunch, someone else will!"' Well, it's often the case that corporations aren't willing to do that, and so the gov't has to step in. Who killed the electric car? The GM CEO who killed the EV1 has admitted that it was his “worst decision” (”Interview with Rick Wagoner”, June, 2006). And these things happen a lot, but we'll never know in the long term how much return was lost because something wasn't done. Craig