My point (oblique though it undoubtedly was) was that President Obama's "you didn't build that" statement very cleanly missed the heart of the issue. It's true - and inevitable - that entrepreneurs rely on public infrastructure, public education, the rule of law, and the like. But that ignores the fact that the vast majority of people who had the same access to those public goods did not use them to build great wealth. That is to say that the existence of public goods are a necessary cause, but not a sufficient one.

(It's also the case that Obama has tried to use that and similar excuses to argue for increased public spending, assuming that if a given level of spending produces a good effect, that more spending will have a larger good effect. He's begging the question.)

(It's also the case that Obama has tried to use that and similar excuses to argue for increased public spending, assuming that if a given level of spending produces a good effect, that more spending will have a larger good effect. He's begging the question.)

This is a very good point, but it's a bit like the Laffer curve - it's hard to know exactly where we are and people can have honest disagreements about it.  How do you know where that "sweet spot" is where you have enough public infrastructure to facilitate business growth but not so much that you're overspending?  Another question is how much to spend on things like proactive maintenance - it seems to me that a lot of the stimulus money being spent on roadwork in the northeast states (PA, DE, NY) isn't necessarily being spent to build new roads or better roads, but it is being spent to fix bridges that were on the verge of collapse, to repave roads that were in very poor repair, etc.  These may not do much to help economic development, but they're certainly worth doing if you want to feel safe driving on the roads from place to place.

Allons-y!

It is rather easy to determine with most of the spending that the Obama Administration wants to increase: it's not for infrastructure at all.

In fiscally conservative Texas, we spend taxpayer dollars on infrastructure. Such as toll roads to nowhere, and fixing guard rail damage (e.g., replacing 25 yards of metal rail to fix the one-inch diameter dent where someone traded a bit of their Ford Mustang's paint).

Does Texas run a budget deficit year after year?

We issue a lot of bonds, but that's different because we're sure to grow our way out of that.

Holy crap!

Well, hopefully a lot of that is going for executions, so it's not all wasted.

Also isn't Texas is known for shady accounting.

If private business had been fully in control, we would have had four or five competing systems like Viewtron, Prodigy, CompuServe, etc. and a much more "push" oriented model, with users having far less control over their hardware and with much greater limitations on the types of devices they could connect to the network.

This is in fact the exact model the big network providers are trying to push with their opposition to network neutrality.  They would much rather have you spend all of your online time in their walled garden where they can sell all of the ads that you see.  Their search page, their movie service, their online stores and media sites.    It doesn't take much of a barrier to get people to switch, then the service provide and captured your revenue stream.  They get both the service fee and the advertising revenue.

I'd expect nothing less from the original.

I HAD HAD SEX WITH HUNTER S THOMPSON. HE CAME IN MY MOUTH AND I SWALLOWED IT. I SHOULD HAVE HAD HIS BABY. WE WOULD BE BALLIN' LIKE KOBE'S SON!!

That's so awesome.

Hmmm I remember having a credit card knife as a kid.

If you like that, you'll love the Crisis Card.

I got more styles than prison got bricks- ain't that some shit?

One thing to make money because of your connections to Putin but another entirely to make money because you've earned it, and "know Putin" because your successful multinational corporation was started and remains headquartered in Russia.

If Apple's president or Microsoft's president or Ford's president "knows Obama", does that make all three of these American-based multinational corporations creatures of America's government, or of Obama personally? Should China, e.g., fear any company whose executives have ever met or interacted with Obama?

And while Putin oppresses chick bands, hands out money to his friends, threatens to impose authoritarian rule in Russia, and expresses admiration for Yevgeny Kaspersky, your good friends in China not only actively engage in cyber-attacks against you but have been unabashedly authoritarian for as long as anyone can remember.

And while Putin oppresses chick bands, your good friends in Saudi Arabia don't have any chick bands, and if they did, 7 years in jail would look like lenient treatment.

And while "peaceful" Putin oppresses chick bands, your uber-buddy Israel plans to start WWIII by attacking Iran and pulling you in.

Yeah, fine, Putin sucks, but nailing Kaspersky up because he "knows Putin" sucks too. In some places, they would call it slander.