Appearing on the Neil Cavuto Show on Fox News, CFACT’s Marc Morano laid the wood to the whole idea that government knows best in research and development. Cavuto first presents President Obama making his case that, “We’ve got to invest in solar and wind and biofuels,” and in another clip, “Government support is critical in helping businesses get new ideas off the ground.”
Morano first points out that 80% of the $80 billion in stimulus package loans through the Department of Energy went to Obama campaign donors and that many of these projects are now in or near bankruptcy. One reason is that government keeps trying to create markets where none exist – and at the same time undercutting markets, like U.S. natural gas, that are exploding.
The worst thing about government intervention, Morano explains, is that the products and technologies with the most merit are not the ones that get funded. In his experience on the Hill, when a company came to the U.S. Congress for handouts, they had already failed in the private sector: “The taxpayer becomes the funder of last resort, and it’s all down to who you lobby, who you give money to, who your connections are.”
Imagine, he concluded, if you are in the 1970’s, would you have funded IBM or a college dropout named Bill Gates?