Solyndra Failure Dwarfed by Gov't-Sponsored Success Stories

[wtmusic]

The search algorithm which allows Republicans to provide disingenuous, misleading support for their talking points was funded by a National Science Foundation grant.

"I recently engaged in a discussion with David Zetland, a former economics professor of mine, on the value of public investment in technology (NB: I feel authorized to re-publish his and my comments because they were originally published on his public blog). It's worth noting that his blog, Aguanomics, is spectacular and I enjoy reading it every day.

Compelled by his assertion that the Solyndra case proved government investment is a failure, I pointed out that without government investment in technological innovation, we wouldn't have jet engines, cell phones, the Internet, any major forms of energy generation, and many other game-changing technologies as they exist today. He gave a thorough response, which I will summarize by pulling out this key quote:

      'Govt shouldn't take my $ to invest. Ever.'

The whole exchange is available here. I was left to assume he was unaware of the DARPA investment that made the Internet possible, without which he could not have made that comment on his blog. He also uses Blogger, which is owned and operated by Google, whose founders benefitted from an NSF grant for the creation of their original algorithm. His rebuttal, that since the Defense Department didn't know that the Internet would be the result of their investment, doesn't really hold much water -- he is essentially saying that because they weren't planned, the huge (read: f'ing HUGE) benefits from this particular investment don't count."

http://theenergycollective.com/alextrembath/65850/submerged-state?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29

Mysteriously, this post appears on theenergycollective.com - a RW propaganda source according to several posters here. Go figure.

[theoldman]

1. Solyndra failure dwarfed by Iraq war.

Over 3000 dead and one trillion dollars wasted. How is that for a comparison.

[bluestateguy]

2. What does the SBA do every day?

They make loans to small businesses, and as far as I can tell, many of them fail.

[JDPriestly]

3. The failure of Solyndra is nothing compared to the successes of the

Tennessee Valley Authority, the government effort that brought electricity to rural America (check out the Rural Electrification Act -- http://www.answers.com/topic/rural-electrification-act), the government investments mentioned in the OP and the might Hoover dam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam

Then, of course, there are the many, many grants and fellowships the government gives to scholars at public and private universities -- who lay the groundwork in areas like biotech, information technology and other important groundbreaking research that private industry, because of its emphasis on short-term profits, will never pay for.

People who claim that government investment doesn't pay or that government doesn't know what it is doing and bungles everything are just ignorant. They don't know the history.