Monday, April 27, 2009

Science, State, and Nation   [Jonah Goldberg]

Rand Simberg has some thoughts on Obama's science speech. An excerpt:

Why set the goal as a percentage of GDP? Why not as a percentage of the federal budget, something over which a president and a government has at least theoretical control? The implication is that he doesn’t just preside over the government and its spending priorities, but that he commands the entire national economy, and can, should and does dictate how others are to spend their own money, which apparently is no longer their own money. It implies a conceit of omniscience on the part of him and his advisors about how much we should be spending on R&D as a function of domestic product, and how we should be spending it, when he has no useful control over what non-governmental entities are spending.

04/27 03:13 PMShare