[P2P-F] taxation and innovation

Fri Sep 16 14:56:43 CEST 2011

This is just one way that corporations transfer the costs of Research and  
Development onto the public. Further they and their court economic  
soothsayers, will like it best if the central government borrow the funds  
to do this as well. The additional fact is that is that in recent times  
what had been a corporate budget line for R and D became a zero to move  
that amount into the commissions and short term profit. From the point of  
view of modestly responsible business planning and development this  
absence is another piece of fraud from the top, aka control fraud, to  
support a significantly large piece of economistic wishful thinking that  
makes profit in the manner to which they have come to assume, high returns  
on investment, and appropriate. Sidebar to this gambit is also the  
defrauding of stock holders by hollowing out that particular corporation.

Taxation as a fiscal policy is used to control the concentration of  
wealth. Unfortunately, the application of taxation as a fiscal policy has  
been used to reduce the wealth of middle and working class people, in  
favor of the plutocrats, CEOs and the "managerial" class. And just what  
were the favorite retirement objectives of TEPCO's executives, and other  
measures of executive merit?

Tadit Anderson

On Fri, 16 Sep 2011 06:39:49 -0400, Michel Bauwens  
<michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:

> *CEOs Urge Taxpayer-Funded
> Innovation*<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/14/bill-gates-jeff-immelt-chad-holliday-urge-taxpayer-funded-innovation.html>
> DANIEL STONE - The Daily Beast
> *One of the big lies of the Randian Right is that government cannot  
> create
> jobs or foster innovation. It has been repeated so many times that like  
> all
> big lies repeated often enough, it is now believed by a large percentage  
> of
> the population. That belief does not make it any less of a lie, as the
> public statements of these mega CEOs and other business leaders make  
> clear.*
> *As Washington debates the country’s economic future, America’s top CEOs  
> say
> the government needs to get serious about finding the next big idea in
> energy-by providing money for long-term research.
>
> Bill Gates and several of his closest friends-CEOs and top executives  
> from
> Bank of America, Lockheed Martin, and Kleiner Perkins-are in Washington
> discussing their latest uphill battle.‬
>
> Most of the executives are used to success. Yet sitting around a  
> conference
> table a few blocks from the White House, they acknowledge their next  
> pursuit
> is a bigger ask, and substantially longer term. In a town talking about
> tightening the government’s belt, the group is urging more government  
> money
> to be spent on finding the next game-changing idea on energy. They say
> energy is the biggest economic frontier over the next decade as fossil  
> fuels
> dwindle, prices fluctuate, and renewable energies become more viable.‬*
>
> Last year, Gates and the group pulled themselves together with a common  
> goal
> of using their profiles as top business leaders to push Washington on  
> ways
> to help them compete globally. It was a nebulous goal, but they decided  
> on
> innovation, an area of historic U.S dominance that has, with the rise of
> industrializing countries like China, an uncertain future. A year later,
> they’ve produced a stark report, titled Catalyzing American Ingenuity,
> calling on Washington to take the lead on research innovation, just as
> lawmakers debate how slim the nation’s long-term budget landscape should
> be.‬
>
> It’s a strange sight, America’s top business leaders arguing they’re ill
> equipped to innovate when Washington gives them substantial leeway, even
> lower tax obligations. But that’s sort of the point. With companies  
> burdened
> by obligations to grow and create jobs in the short term, industry  
> research
> doesn’t always make business sense. 'Every economist will tell you that  
> you
> cannot count on the private sector to come in and fill in that piece,”  
> Gates
> told a group of journalists skimming the report at Washington’s  
> Bipartisan
> Policy Center, which helped facilitate the study. 'The idea is long-term
> research funded by the government.” His colleagues sit around nodding.‬
>
> At the moment, three major arguments are usually made against industry
> innovation funded by taxpayers. One is that the government moves too  
> slowly
> and can’t pivot toward new market trends or research advances. Another is
> that it’s simply too expensive, especially now. And the third is that
> corporations have the biggest incentive-the lure of sky-high profits-to  
> find
> the next game-changing idea. When President Obama dismissively noted in  
> his
> jobs speech Thursday to Congress that Republicans think the government
> should just get out of the way and let private companies do the work of
> moving the economy forward, Republicans awkwardly cut him off with  
> applause
> and cheers.‬
>
> Yet American business leaders are now arguing that U.S.companies don’t
> research enough because they simply can't. Demands of shareholders don’t
> reward long-term planning, especially in a sector like energy, with
> unpredictable price shifts and volatile geopolitics. The result, then, is
> that companies tend more toward slight advancements in order to box out a
> rival. But they shy away from massive shifts because of what’s known as  
> the
> spillover effect, when a company can’t monetize all of the benefits of  
> its
> idea and ends up helping competitors.‬
>
> According to an industry study by the National Science Foundation,  
> private
> firms spend a strikingly small amount of money-about 3.5 percent of
> revenues-on looking for the next big thing. Energy utility companies  
> spend
> even less, in the realm of a 10th of a percent, on new technology  
> research.‬
> Advocates of further research point to the Internet, the advent of GPS,  
> or
> America’s highway system as examples of what the government can do that a
> private company simply wouldn’t. That’s because private markets don’t  
> exist
> for some markets, like building a military or protecting the environment.
>
> Spillover in government is common and can be mutually beneficial. ‪Take,  
> for
> example, gas turbine engines. The idea came from a project of the Defense
> Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a division of the Pentagon,  
> back
> in the 1980s and 1990s. The original goal was to make military jets fly
> faster and farther. But the burgeoning wind-energy industry caught hold  
> of
> the same technology. It’s unlikely that start-up wind developers would  
> have
> pumped billions of dollars into a new generation of turbines, but the
> combined cycle gas turbine is now what powers America’s largest wind  
> farms.‬
>
> There is, in fact, a sizable union between defense and energy technology.
> Back in 1958, the Pentagon started DARPA to keep U.S. military technology
> ahead of other countries, especially Russia, which had just launched
> Sputnik. Researchers developed aerospace technologies to make aircraft  
> more
> resilient, and even stealth. A prototype of an internal network, dubbed
> DARPA-NET, eventually became the foundation of the modern Internet.‬
>
> Harnessing DARPA’s success, the Bush administration created an offshoot  
> in
> 2007 devoted solely to energy. Labeled the Advanced Research Projects
> Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the program got the bulk of its funding in the  
> 2009
> stimulus bill. Since then, the agency’s researchers have partnered with  
> some
> companies to probe advances in battery storage, efficiency research, and
> even new energy technology, like nuclear fusion.
>
> The program hasn’t discovered something on the magnitude of the next  
> World
> Wide Web quite yet, but it vows to keep looking. 'These are very risky
> programs, but you have to take some shots,” says Arun Majumdar, the head  
> of
> the ARPA-E program, who used to lead the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.‬
>
> Late last month, Vice President Joe Biden visited Las Vegas to give a  
> speech
> at the National Clean Energy Summit announcing a $100 million joint  
> funding
> venture between the public and private sector to research semiconductors,
> biodiesel efficiency, and battery storage. Speaking to the roomful of
> engineers and start-up executives, Biden said it was America that  
> invented
> the photovoltaic solar panel, and it was Uncle Sam who installed the  
> first
> megawatt-size wind turbines. The implicit message was that America had
> fallen behind.
>
> 'China leads in installed wind capacity, while Germany leads in installed
> solar capacity,” he told the convention. Both countries have outspent the
> U.S. on clean-energy research projects-China by almost double. Those  
> small
> disparities can get much bigger when advances enter the $5 trillion  
> annual
> energy market.‬
>
> The key problem, however, may be the null hypothesis-explaining what  
> would
> be lost over the next decade if the U.S. turned its back on energy R&D.  
> Hal
> Harvey, head of the ClimateWorks Foundation, points to Detroit as a case
> study in how poor research investment ceded battles over auto innovation  
> to
> companies in Japan and Korea. The American auto industry is bouncing  
> back,
> but only after being rescued by Washington, and now with a substantial
> disadvantage.‬
>
> Yet the battle over energy may still be winnable. ‪Last year, Bank of
> America chairman Chad Holliday visited Shanghai. He was overheard openly
> dismissing China’s research acumen at a dinner one evening until the vice
> mayor of the city, clearly peeved, invited him to tour one of the
> government’s research laboratories. When Holliday arrived at 7 a.m. the  
> next
> morning, top scientists had been working around the clock. They had  
> advanced
> machines and the place was buzzing with activity. 'That’s the kind of  
> thing
> we’re competing against,” said Holliday. 'We need the same thing.”