Comment 28055

By Don't Forget (anonymous) | Posted January 07, 2009 at 15:08:04

A Smith, you're arguing that the U.S. has more innovation (debatable anyway) because of its relatively unregulated free markets. I'm saying the U.S.' level of innovation is largely due to it's government run industrial strategy. An industrial strategy the U.S. pretends it doesn't have by calling it "defense spending" instead. The U.S. is a cheater, it wants the benefits of an industrial strategy but without having to admit that that actually works better than an industrial strategy.

Also I don't agree that military spending is preferable to things like public health and education, first of all I think that's crap since most military spending is actually spending toward consumer R&D fed to companies that also make military products. Second of all I'd rather decouple industrial strategy from the military since the current system puts too much power in the hands of military corporations which are then big enough to influence the government to be more militaristic. Third of all look at the cost of building a car in the U.S. or in Canada, it's cheaper in Canada even though our taxes are a bit higher because the auto makers don't have to pay huge private health care costs for Canadian workers. That's why the automakers are still here instead of all in the Deep South.

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