That's my problem I read just about everything you post, it's a slog but I get through it. Dude stop whining I don't insult you and I definitely don't question your motives because they are a plain as day. You know you can't quite me.
Correct. You could call it a moat with alligators too if you want. Invoking the Wall just makes my spine cringe but it's the truth of what we need in our Democracy. A FIGURATIVE wall of laws that keep money out of governing. That's why the question of "should billionaires exist" is a "Yes, but...." or "No, but...." rather than a simple yes or no answer. It's not necessarily them that are the problem, but the risk profile they have in our current system of Wild West Crony Capitalism. My reasoning for saying "No, but....." is because of the way that wall street has funded the modern day billionaires like Zuckerberg who aren't liquid. It's sort of a separate conversation though about VC funding in our new business world. Billionaires like Zuckerberg have much much more to lose and are kinda screwed if a bill or two are created by the Government that puts their business in a position to lose value which increases the likelihood of them getting involved in manipulating politicians. I don't want to demagogue People like Zuckerberg just because they are rich. I want to raise awareness to their risk profile in our current system, and hopes we can change it to create a "Moat"/Wall to lower their risk profile for improperly influencing our government (you are correct that corruption might not be technically the most correct word, but you get the point).
There were Bell labs before. Now there is Tesla. A lot of universities having significant research done are private. A lot of scientist are funded by private industry (although these industries want a particular outcome). There are pros and cons. Even Amazon is opening new businesses and redefining various industries.
I read this paragraph yesterday and sort of glossed over it. Now I'm seeing this additional statement: I'm wondering (a) how you quantify "advancements in innovation and research" and (b) what evidence you have that such advancements are made primarily through public funding in universities. If you look at data on sources of funding for R&D in the U.S., it appears the bulk of R&D money is private: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-sources-and-uses-of-us-science-funding e.g., By far, the dominant sources of funding for R&D in America have been private industry and the federal government; together, they accounted for 93 percent of R&D spending in 2009. In that year, as shown in Figure 4, private industry spent $247.4 billion, or 62 percent of total R&D spending, while the federal government spent $124.4 billion, accounting for 31 percent of the nation’s spending on R&D. Figure 4 also shows that the role of private industry in underwriting R&D has increased significantly since the late 1980s. Until then, industry and federal expenditures roughly tracked each other, but industry has since considerably outpaced government in funding R&D. The federal share of support for overall R&D in the United States grew from 57 percent in 1955 to a peak of 67 percent in 1964, before slowly declining to 31 percent in 2009. As Figure 2 showed, 1964 and 2009 represent the two highest peaks of spending on R&D as a percentage of GDP in American history — 2.88 percent and 2.87 percent, respectively. But the proportions coming from government and industry have reversed over the past five decades: in 1964, 1.92 percent of GDP was spent by the federal government on R&D, while in 2009, 1.77 percent was spent by private industry. Private industry and the federal government dwarf all other sources of R&D in the United States, as shown by the lines along the bottom of Figure 4. Universities, colleges, and other non-profits accounted for just 6.2 percent of national R&D funding in 2009, while state and local governments underwrote less than 1 percent of the national total. Unless you're arguing that private research monies are largely wasted and do NOT result in "advancements in innovation and research," I'm curious how you derive your conclusion that it is a "common misconception that advancements in innovation and research predominantly happens in the private sector." It would seem to me that advancements in innovation and research might correlate, at least roughly, to overall R&D expenditures. Or perhaps I'm missing something here in your argument.
No, I'm saying private funding has different motivations in r&d than public funding. Funding of R&D in industry is mostly refining for cost efficiency. Engineers in the private sector have different goals than engineers and scientists in the public sector. Engineers in the private sector's number one goal is refining the manufacturing process of their product or service for maximum cost efficiency. Engineers use established scientific principles and knowledge that are discovered in the public research. Public research doesn't have a motive to monetize. Hence, the private sector relies on the public sector for high risk research that in its current state shows very little promise for monetization in the near future.
did a bit more reading on this topic, you might be interested in the following 2017 article--apparently the percentage of private research monies going to basic research is on the rise. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...t-share-basic-research-funding-falls-below-50 excerpts: For the first time in the post–World War II era, the federal government no longer funds a majority of the basic research carried out in the United States. Data from ongoing surveys by the National Science Foundation (NSF) show that federal agencies provided only 44% of the $86 billion spent on basic research in 2015. The federal share, which topped 70% throughout the 1960s and ’70s, stood at 61% as recently as 2004 before falling below 50% in 2013. The sharp drop in recent years is the result of two contrasting trends—a flattening of federal spending on basic research over the past decade and a significant rise in corporate funding of fundamental science since 2012. The first is a familiar story to most academic scientists, who face stiffening competition for federal grants. But the second trend will probably surprise them. It certainly flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which paints U.S. companies as so focused on short-term profits that they have all but abandoned the pursuit of fundamental knowledge, an endeavor that may take decades to pay off. . . . *** The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is the major driver behind the recent jump in corporate basic research, according to NSF’s annual Business Research and Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS), which tracks the research activities of 46,000 companies. Drug company investment in basic research soared from $3 billion in 2008 to $8.1 billion in 2014, according to the most recent NSF data by business sector. Spending on basic research by all U.S. businesses nearly doubled over that same period, from $13.9 billion to $24.5 billion. Basic research comprises only about one-sixth of the country’s spending on all types of R&D, which totaled $499 billion in 2015. Applied makes up another one-sixth, whereas the majority, some $316 billion, is development. Almost all of that is funded by industry and done inhouse, as companies try to convert basic research into new drugs, products, and technologies that they hope will generate profits. (The pharmaceutical and biotech industry, for example, spent a total of $102 billion on research and development in 2015, according to Research!America, an Arlington, Virginia–based advocacy group.) Those private sector efforts are now the dominant form of research activity in the United States, with business spending $3 on research for every $1 invested by the U.S. government. In the 1960s the federal government outspent industry by a two-to-one margin, but the balance tipped in 1980.
Often, I think innovation comes from a mixture of sources. The internet is a huge if not the biggest innovation in the last 50 years. That was done by the government and then advanced through private and public-funded research. But it originally came from government money. Cell phone advancement to smartphone improvement is another huge advancement in technology.
This suggests a huge lack of understanding of how business taxes work - taxes don't necessarily match the right years, but you can't just magically avoid taxes. Yes, Amazon paid no taxes last year. It also paid an effective 91% tax rate in 2014. "Profits" are simply allocated differently for tax purposes than for accounting purposes, so the taxes don't line up properly with profits. But over the long haul, it generally comes back to even - minus specific incentives Congress may pass for specific investments/research/etc.
Sure - they are a growing company and their story isn't done. They'll owe taxes in the future on their current profits.
What's your point? Notice what that chart doesn't include - a decade prior to 2009 when they lost billions of dollars. Much of the first part of their profits was written off against losses, which is perfectly normal for business. If you lose $1 million and then make $1 million, you don't pay anything in taxes - no different than capital gains. Again, if you understand corporate profits and taxation, it's not going to be 1:1 linked to their annual profitability. But over a long period, it will generally balance out. High-growth companies will especially look weird because much of their taxable profits are delayed, so it will always look like they are underpaying until their growth slows/stops and their taxable profits catch up to their regular profits. That's sort of what you saw in the 91% year. Amazon spends a ton on things like capital investment and stuff like that which gets taxed and accounted for in very different ways. Depreciation and amortization distort all that stuff, but it always catches up to the company in one way or another.
on your part. why do you think that Amazon and Corp has a large tax department, as well as hiring tax lawyers and tax consultant to develop tax avoidance schemes. a dead give-away that u have no idea what ur talking about
I still say the government spends more on R&D than almost everyone else if you included the money spent on military applications. The government gives money to defense contractors in billions of dollars each year for in military tech. I wonder if that is tracked
A good argument and I agree that there is a lot of money invested in the public sector for pure science. There are corporations involved in both pure science and projects that are not just for short term monetization. For example Bell Labs and Xerox's PARC labs developed a lot of technology that there parent companies saw little to no financial benefit but are very important to our current technology. Google X is developing projects that might never come to be but because Google's founders believe in long range technology development. To the topic of this discussion it is only the largest wealthiest companies that can undertake such research as small companies can't afford such investments.
True and things like the Intenet and GPS only exist because they were Defense related projects. If the Military is the main driver of research then why shouldn't we look to the private sector also for research? What is worse, developing technology to wage war or to make money?
