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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: the reason govt should not fund space exploitation/exploration
Message-ID: <1358@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 31-Oct-83 09:56:28 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1358
Posted: Mon Oct 31 09:56:28 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 31-Oct-83 11:26:32 EST
References: houca.412, <2056@utah-cs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
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The argument "people wouldn't fund things where there are no immediate gains"
may be specious. If I didn't have to pay any taxes, I could spend a *lot*
more money on the space program. So could a lot of people I know. There might
be *MORE* money for NASA under this scheme.

The other thing to consider is that *one* of the reasons that companies go
for short term gains rather than long term, is that if you give the government
enough lead-in time there are numerous cases where a poor company has sat down
to reap the benefits of their long term gains and found the tax-man has got
there ahead of them and is proceeding to tax the hell out of the enterprise.

it kind of takes the edge off the victory, now, doesn't it?

But what you are actually saying is that people ought to have foresight,
don't, and so we need a government to be the foresight of the people. I
think that we need to teach people to have more foresight. And you can't
do that while also treating them as morons who are incapable of foresight.

I'm not all that convinced that governments have any more foresight than
the next election anyway.

Laura Creighton
utcsstat!laura