Brownback: I’m anti-cancer
Ryan | 7 06 2007If you're a first time visitor, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, which will keep you up to date with all the latest New School Politics posts. Thanks for visiting!
I chuckled to myself when I heard Senator Sam Brownback say that a goal of his presidency would be to cure cancer in 10 years. Statements like that are enough to drive a thinking man crazy. Sam Brownback will not cure cancer, he has no knowlege of to even begin exploring remedies nor do any politicians in their occupational capacity. But what he will try and do is use taxpayer money to fund the medical researchers who he likes the most; that is what he meant by “anti-cancer.”
Governement funding of science is an awful idea for two reasons: (a) it creates bad incentives–in a free market, capacity for innovation will draw investment; in a government influenced market, political pull will draw funding. The two are adverse and only the one where free exchange is present and productiveness is the lone borometer of success will scientific breakthrough actually occur.
(b) Second, it creates waste. Because government has bad incentives it tends to loose perspective on special interest issues. Meaning pols will hype the importance of individual issues so much that they will invest more money into it than it deserves (i.e. agriculture) in order to pander for more votes. The fact that these politicians constantly ignore is that everything has a proper price tag and because there is always a limited amount of resources in an economy, you must prioritize spending. The free market always prioritizes best, becuase it has the best incentives.
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The best part is, Brownback also is against evolution and
Chou | 7 06 2007The best part is, Brownback also is against evolution and stem-cell research, and for universal healthcare and affirmative action. What an idiot. Does he expect to cure cancer by praying? If he gets elected it’d almost be as bad as legallizing all illegal immigrants in America. Oh wait…
Brownback is such a flaming populist, he’s almost as bad as John Edwards, except that he’s probusiness (sorta). He’s such an idiot when it comes to science and wants to meddle in family affairs as much as possible, by censoring television and the internet. Plus he wants to withdraw troops from Iraq. And he wants to tax the rich even more heavily. Who does he think he is? Huey Long?
Ryan, you also forgot to mention the fact that the money he will give will inevitably end up in the hands of an unnecessary beauracracy, as well as ludicrous legislation that will favor “underrepresented” minorities and also basically find a way to use government money in as useless a pursuit as possible. I hate populism so much, because it’s so anti-progress. Socialists are a little bit okay. Populists, no.