Replies to post #92202 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[wbmw]

sure the government should spend structure to enhance our economy. But there is just no way they can vision out what will be.. WoW the govs had 30 years to ween us off dependence on foreign oil. But what if Carter, then Reagan had launched a "program" for all citizens to drive pigmy cars and oil companies had to only buy only from a NorthAmerican PEC... mandates and incentives to steer actions in the direction the Congress and Pres. decided in 1972, what to do. Can you imagine how that would have been? Especially considering oil got down to $10 a barrell. Where would we be now? Inovaton is ignited by needs to be filled. If the govs had set it all up with their limited 1970's vision of that they "thought" it would be like, we may not have hybrid tech, or the new Natural Gas technique that has exploded our domestic potential etc etc etc.

Hogsgeteaten, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you have a general misunderstanding of how government spending works.

Spending is not a precision tool that puts a beaurocrat in charge of exactly where the money goes, such as your example of putting money into pigmy cars. The way grants work is that the government is only the provider of the funding. The money is funneled through, for example, a university, which has 'n' number of research programs, usually geared towards practical sciences that beaurocrats would have no specific knowledge about. The university would apply for the grant, fill out the paperwork, and receive the money to enable their professors and masters/doctorate students to fulfill the work item described in the grant.

In a sense, this is like throwing hundreds of darts at a wall, and hoping that a few of them hit within the bullseye. Only a small number of project grants end up being "the next big thing", but if they do succeed, the multiplier on the return on investment is huge, and usually makes up for all the projects that don't hit it big.

So, pigmy cars might have been just one grant, but with the hundreds of others, you see technologies emerge that move the country towards new innovations. Historically, this has been a method of spending that is known to work, and if you want to know more about the grants from the Stimulus (ARRA) Bill, you can look at the recovery.gov website and see them all listed. Obama's bill has been completely and 100% transparent.

As far as government spending, just look at what has happened when we count on govs to decide where the money flow should go. BIG BUISNESS! Don't you gov lovers realize your affection is misplaced. BIG BUSINESS pulls the strings of GOVS. Do govs hang out with you and I? NO! Humans are who they associate with and govs are influenced by the paid lobbyists and are buds with CEOs.

Traditionally, most Democrats have run on a platform of anti-Big Business, and most of them have followed through. Although you can't expect that means Big Business will be excluded from all aspects of the government, you can expect proposals for legislation to usually be controversial and against the best interests of Big Business. Take, for example, the Health Care Reform bill. That threatened to take most of the profits out of health insurance companies to insure more Americans at a less expensive rate, so of course it earned the fury of the insurance lobbies. That's where "Death Panels" and other crazy lies came from - the insurance companies are familiar with how to convince Americans to vote against their own best interests due to fear, and side with the same corporations who are ripping them off.

Especially right now, look. Flooding money into the Too Big to Fail Banks, has not helped. Loans to small businesses are justified by the 'cash flow' of the small business. Small business create jobs, they can't get loans and worse don't see revenue growth on the horizon anyhow.

You are preaching to the choir, now. :-) But do you blame Obama for this? He may have voted for TARP in 2008 because it was the right thing to do, but no one likes that we had to do that. And many agree that we should be reforming the banking industry and preventing another meltdown from happening. Unfortunately, legislation has passed the House to do this, but it's being blocked in the Senate by the Republicans.

Again, I'm not trying to point fingers - only state the facts that Republicans believe in laissez-faire business, which is completely unregulated free markets. But, come on.... Do you want to prevent another bank bailout, or don't you? You can't have it both ways. Either we let businesses do their own thing, unregulated, and set the country up for another implosion, or we prevent "Too Big to Fail" from happening by regulating big business. The Democrats are trying to pass a bill that does this, but the Republicans are blocking them.