The Hoover Dam made it more possible for us to settle and modernize the Southwest. It allowed us to bring water and energy and irrigation to a massive part of the country. And there was no single business that had either the money or the incentive to build it. More to the point: the allocation of tax dollars to big infrastructure projects proved compatible with free markets and the billions of dollars that people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were able to accumulate. There's a middle ground between seizing the modes of production and allocating tax dollars to infrastructure & defense which your well meaning rage does not seem to capture.Screw Eisenhower....What worked when he had total control of the military situation isn't practical or practicable in a free economy.
The USSR was tried, operating on that very philosophy....How'd that shake out?
Look at the Cold War budgets for the Pentagon and NASA. Government and business partnered very effectively in the sectors of commercial aviation and consumer electronics. I'm sure you can imagine the technology required to project American power around the globe or put a man on the moon. Indeed, a lot of the technology that fueled the 1980s consumer electronics boom came out of the state sector. Even small things like containerization (which greatly improved the efficiency of shipping) was developed
by the state sector.
Or look at the massive government led industrial build up for WWII. Specifically, look at how war manufacturing plants were converted into private sector industries for consumables - and the role these industries played in establishing America's postwar manufacturing dominance.
Again, I'm suggesting that you might want to separate this kind of spending from welfare spending.
Tragically, your information systems have left you with oversimplified clichés about "evil government", when they should've helped you see the complicated but effective partnership between government and the private sector. Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Eli Lilly and Boeing all have deep and very effective partnerships with the American government. Those partnerships, subsidized heavily by the taxpayer, have resulted in trillions of dollars in profits for private investors. Your tired talk about Socialism doesn't account for this, but you keep repeating it because it's all you have.
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, CNBC, Bill O'Reilly, Mark Levine, Michael Savage, MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, and FOX News do a great job fueling the rage of stupid people, but they fail to educate.
Turn the shit off and take your brain back.
Last edited: