U.S. Economic Recovery Is Weakest Since World War II

They knew where to spend it when the WPA was created. Is history forgotten? Are any reps advocating even that kind of spending?

 

Is WPA still around? I didn't know that was a long term success story.

Why do you think gov't is so smart right after we got Solyndra'd?

Here is the type of waste you are advocating

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/b8opYArPtPI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

What the Solyndra-phobes continue to ignore is that that bet was just one among many. Some bets have paid off massively, like the internet. What is the long term win/loss on government sponsored R&D?

 

Oh boy...

First, the internet was mostly developed and paid for outside government as the original wasn't useful for the larger role. Second, the original internet was not an economic investment, it was a scientific-military one. Third, it took 30 years to come to fruition. Fourth, WPA didn't invent things, they simply dug ditches.

So how much of Gov't R&D pays off? Very small percentage. I can speak with authority on that one. I have been party to many government paid for efforts and knew many scientists within gov't. A success rate at DARPA (the successor to ARPA) of 10%, just tech success and not economic or militray success, is considered real good. Nobody really knows the economic impact, but probably like NASA it is small.

The consumer market and the military market are very different. Intel won't even make military spec items.

You might say DoE and Sandia are helping, but Solyndra shows you that politics will trump science anyway in energy.

 

did'nt know that. who was the original owner of the internet? who were the folks that paid for it?

 

ARPA, but that network was not useful for what was to come.

Here's the the thing about the internet, if you want to say that nobody else would have ever thought to network computers then you don't know much about computers. It's just not that big a deal. ARPA paid stanford to do it since they were about the only folks that had computers and a need.

 

I thought Al Gore invented the internet.

That's what he says anyway.

 

You didn't happen to stumble across the recent Scientific American article on the history of the internet, did you?

 

no, got a link?

 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...t-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/