Jed, Now you are bragging. Rich guys don't live in active flight paths with novice pilots flying over their heads daily, they live in Roswell where I do...
On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 2:23 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > Chemical Engineer <[email protected]> wrote: > > In this case the Pioneer will be the US taxpayer. > > > Always has been. From canals through computers, the Internet, the GPS and > human genome, taxpayers and Uncle Sam have led the way. > > > >> Jed's liberal sheep just lept from his wolfs clothing. I figured you >> were a "tax the rich" guy. > > > Worse than that! I *am* a rich guy. > > Like Theodore Roosevelt, Bill Gates and many other responsible rich guys, > I favor taxing the rich. As Willie Sutton said of the banks, that's where > the money is. They got it. They don't need it as much as other people do. > They benefit from the government disproportionately. > > Look at it this way. After the government invented computers, lasers and > the Internet, and after Al Gore helped transform the Internet into a > national system, who benefited the most? Financially, that is. It was > dot-com entrepreneurs, especially people such as Zuckerberg. He ran the > last 100 meters of 50 km race. Uncle Sam invented the technology, handed it > to him on a silver platter, and he made a few minor tweaks the led to > Facebook. In return he earned billions of dollars. In my opinion, he owes a > large fraction of that to Uncle. Everyone who has benefited from computers > over the last 70 years owes Uncle, including me. > > No institution in history has contributed more to technology and science > than the U.S. government. No other institution comes close. > > If PV solar takes off, who do you think will benefit most? Big > corporations and wealthy people. > > If cold fusion becomes a reality, we can thank the governments of the UK, > Utah, Italy and the US Federal government. Just about every dollar spent on > it so far came from them. Fleischmann, Pons, Miles, Storms, Mizuno and most > others were government employees for their entire careers. Private industry > has contributed practically nothing, until recently. > > By the way, Fleischmann agrees with me on this issue. He is old school > about economics. A member of the WWII generation. > > > [Note: Sutton denied that he ever said it, but he published a book with a > similar title.] > > - Jed > >
