[Rich10]

Originally Posted by wriggz

1. You stop acting like the right to Health and Education are "Nice things to have". A healthy tax structure leads to a healthy Middle class, which in turn supports itself. Stagnant wages while corporations make record profits, pay out dividends at record levels and avoid their tax responsibility all leads to the acceptance that these things cost too much. America is the exception not the rule when it comes to Healthcare and Higher education among the wealthier countries.

2. Your right the Iphone is not a government invention. But the research that created the first computers, the touch screen was invented at CERN and the University of Illinois, Much of the research done on lithium batteries came from Universities including Pennsylvania, Texas and Oxford, the internet started at the Department of Defense and NSF, and we can thank the Military for GPS systems (not to mention NASA, ESA, and Russia for putting all the satellites into orbit). I will still grant you that Capitalism working with Socialism is awesome (otherwise we would never had TANG). I'm not sure how you count universities and hospitals, but their innovations are not profit driven (at least directly) and they make far more advances than companies. I don't think you want to run a comparison between NASA and Tesla for innovation.


3. I drew out the fact that less money is flowing back into the Economy through taxes and that investment in R&D, expansion and higher wages were abandoned for financial wizardry and multimillion dollar salary increases lead to erosion of the middle class. There is likely truth in both our logic, however unless you plan to close your boarders and bust up the robots, financial policy seems the only way to see things return to the prosperity the US had in the 60's.

1. Like I said, I'm not an expert in health or education. Certainly, education through high school is paid for through taxes. State Universities (of which some are excellent) have tuitions which are very affordable. I'd like everyone to have free healthcare. I'd also like everyone to have a new Mercedes Benz. I just don't want to pay for it. Everyone loves taxes when someone else pays them and it doesn't hurt the economy. I'm not sure how to balance these things. Like I said, I'm not a healthcare spending expert.
2. I'm a big fan of NASA. I assume that you realize that the government doesn't actually make things. NASA pays Boeing, Lockheed Martin, ... to make things. I have worked with state universities and I can tell you that they are very interested in profits from their inventions. Again, government has its place. But you can't compare innovation of NASA vs Tesla, you should perhaps look at Boeing vs Tesla (both capitalist companies).
3. I'll reiterate my earlier point, the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US was caused by globalization and mechanization, not hedge fund managers. As for investment in R&D, in the US, it has increased from $333 million as of 2000 to $433 million as of 2013.https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domes...ing-on-r-d.htm Wages are determined by the market. Companies pay dividends if they don't have a better use for the money. What happens to the dividends, typically, it is reinvested.

It seems that you have a Socialist mindset while I have a Capitalist mindset. This is OK, we don't need to agree. But going back to one of your earlier posts, which countries have done better over time, Socialist or Capitalist countries? Why not follow what works best?