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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (14399)	3/11/2010 8:42:24 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

hey invest in long range projects that are considered high risk high reward. Examples? Space exploration, fusion power, renewable energy. Space exploration is not for the most part an investment. Sending probes to Saturn is science, not something with a reasonably hoped for monetary return. Sending people in to space is more about national prestige, and also science (human biological adaptation to space, repairing Hubble, etc.) Potentially useful information, and at least something I'm interested in, but its a stretch to call it investment. Developing lift capacity that enables the exploration is, but the government hasn't been very good at doing that. I might support it anyway, but its relatively inexpensive (I'm considering not only budgetary costs, but the cost of government intervention in the economy which for implementing rather than just researching, alternate energy, compared to the negligible intervention and compliance costs from the space program. Fusion power is basic scientific research as well. Some other alternative or renewable power efforts are also basic research. I don't have a problem with that (at least not with the concept, I'm not necessarily endorsing every effort). With the most commonly talked about alternative energy sources, we are mostly passed the basic research stage. I might not object to some continued funding. Some basic research efforts remain, in fact new ideas to research will continue to come up. Also some effort that shades a bit more to applied research would IMO be acceptable. But actually deciding what energy sources will be used and heavily subsiding them for wide spread roll out, while penalizing other sources, is a totally different animal. when the government listens to business leaders who are asking for help When the government listens to business leaders who are asking for help the most common result is successful rent seeking.