The US Govt does use Bell Labs. Bell Labs developed for the army missiles that could hit aircraft. This necessity of govt was brought about by the invention of the jet aircraft which was also a necessity of govt.

The History Channel used to have a show that would show technology developed for the military to include the space program that later found its way into the civilian sector but be reminded that there was no demand nor necessity for these things by the civilian sector in the first place.

Aviation greatly advanced due to government necessity not the civilian sector. The US military had intercontinental aircraft in service before the civilians did. It was the technology gained by doing necessity work for the US Govt that those civilian owned aviation companies used to put in their civilian fleet.

The term computer referred to a job title of a person. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer

Without the US Govt necessity would IBM had ever become as big as it did since the US Govt had a need and IBM filled it.

We can assume that something else would have come along but we do not have the luxury of a time machine to play out our fantasies.

What I find funny are the comments about someone making 50 million and then saying that HE created all these other people as if he singlehandedly Al Gored the internet. Does anyone get the irony in that? That man did not create any millionaires. They created themselves. And the man who makes 50 million should learn humility and be more humble that he would not be able to make that 50 million without the blood sweat and tears of those below that actually make the company function.

I used to hear that lame analogy when in the US Army to where Officers would take great credit for things and are blinded and think gee that General won the battle, if it were not for the General's decision if not for his decision blah blah blah. Well it may had been that general's decision to move around the left but it was the soldiers who actually made this left who made it possible who further made decisions based on situational awareness as they arose that the General could never had made sitting back in his limousine. They deserve the lion share of the credit because if it had failed just like Corporate America they would have been blamed. That General would have skipped off to some other duty post. In the case of Corporate America casualties are not measured in deaths but measured in layoffs while that CEO either remains with the same salary or jumps ship to another company with equal or higher pay and huge retirement packages.

We have heard this before with some saying Bill Gates made all these millionaires, as if he personally did all the work and just hired people and said here is a million dollars, in other words he Al Gored Microsoft. Billy was a co founder and could not afford to pay his workers so he paid them in shares. Those workers did not just sit on their butts they actually programmed and did the lion share of all the programming. It is their hard work that turned those stock certificates into millions. Bill Gates by proxy of company title simply raked in the dough since he as well paid himself a higher amount of shares. Those btw were his initial programmers because Billy is also known for cheating out his other programmers by making promises he never kept and paying them dick wages as programmers. He was eventually was sued by them and lost to which he appealed, rinse repeat. It as well changed how Temps were classified. They became called Contractors but this did not stop the abuse of what a contractor is. IT is now foolishly outsourcing a lot of talent.

Maybe the stockholders will one day wake up and realize that giving one man 50 million dollars only means that one man can buy one TV but putting more money into the hands of the workers who actually do the work buys a hell of a lot more TVs and churns the economy a hell of a lot faster. It as well puts the money right back into their hands which allows them to create jobs etc. Putting all the money into the hands of a few is no guarantee that money will be churned but sit in massive bank accounts. Sure some of it will eventually create jobs but the vast amount of it collects in massive bank accounts.

Having been now in the private sector for 20 years I see as much if not more red tape in the private realms, waaaaay too many chiefs and not enough Indians. We need to take some military principles such as leadership and stop this old school corporate structure as well as put more decision making into the hands of those who actually do the work not those who push pencils and make up terms that never do the work themselves. I am not a line item expense. I save the company face all the time due to upper management poor decision making and two corporate giants duking it out. Btw my first job out of the military I worked my way up in 2 years to management. It was a low paying dead end job with stupid management.

In a bizarro world it would be funny as hell if stockholders started to outsource management to all these other cultures who are eager and will work for less and have a huge supply of advanced degree holders. We do have video and audio conferencing capabilities.

Commence with the name calling. This is my one and only post.

It would take the legislative body making a full committement to the principle of federalism and then implementing a tax scheme built on that principle — where the states would have to tax their residents with the federal government billing the individual states for federal services.

The final result would have to look something like governmental power being divested and returned back to the states…as if an amendment were to read: "Remember the ninth and tenth amendments? Yeah, well this time we're gonna really mean it!"

So, if the Progressives really want mandatory health insurance where premiums have nothing to do with insurance risk and everything to do with ability to pay the premium, get your STATE legislators to go along with that and leave everyone else out of it: watching the economics play out.

The way to eliminate rent seeking (and those seeking the rent) is to eliminate the rent.

Duh. How do you propose to do that? Please don't say "vote Republican". That's not even funny anymore.