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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (531323)	11/22/2009 4:17:20 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574854

So according to you all the money our government spent in developing the Internet through DARPA was a not an investment. You really are amazingly ignorant of how things really work.

To: i-node who wrote (531323)	11/23/2009 11:52:34 AM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574854

An "investment" is money put up that will be returned plus some earnings premium. The reason you feel this way is because you don't consider the country in the aggregate as an investment unit. Take this statement for example... And the return on that "investment" is ZERO. Of course it isn't...it may not appear as investment plus gain in a government bank account, but it will benefit (as in national ROI) in other ways...that seed money may stimulate the growth of on industry, or jobs in the way of people who will design or manufacture that car you used as an example, or give rise to a new sector of the economy, as in renewable energy solutions or accelerate productivity gains as in the advent of the internet. I would even dispute that there is no return to the government...any expansion in the economy is preferred to a contraction, in terms of tax revenue. You think of this in ideological terms... There is no return on that "investment" -- unless you just lend the money at a rate higher than 5% to utility companies. This is an EXPENDITURE, not an INVESTMENT. What a silly, simplistic notion... Al