On Feb 22, 2005, at 7:28 AM, John Howell wrote:
The arguments against the space program, which is the ONLY way we can eventually ensure the survival of the human race, are similar. But where do these people think that money actually goes? It doesn't disappear into some black hole. It is used to purchase things and to pay people's salaries. Every penny is immediately returned to the economy to create jobs, which in turn create more jobs, increase the tax base (which is where educational funding comes from in this country), support contractors and subcontractors and their employees' families. I don't consider economics a real science, since it can only generate opinions and never predict outcomes accurately, but common sense says that every dollar spent in ANY public or private endeavor circulates through the economy and benefits both the economy and the citizens who make up that economy. Including the money raised for and spent on the infamous Gates.
Economics is a social science. To pretend it is a hard science which can be encompassed by mathematical formulas is a grave mistake (as John Kay persuasively argues in his book), but to pretend that it is no science at all and no better than "common sense" is surely just as mistaken.
Your defense of the space program -- which I personally consider a hideously wasteful boondoggle (that happens to cost the U.S. government more than 100 times as much as all spending on the arts) -- reminds me of something John Maynard Keynes once wrote:
<< If the treasury were to fill up old bottles with bank notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on the well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig up the notes again ... then there need be no more unemployment, and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.
<< It would indeed be more sensible to build houses and the like, but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than doing nothing. >>
Your economy-boosting space program is Keynes's rubbish pit.
mdl
_______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
