TaxPayers Need Return on Investment
It is long past time that taxpayers adopt the concept that their taxes used to subsidize research and industries require a return on investment. This concept is new, and voters must make it their own, if Congress is to even acknowledge its existence. Make it a 2008 campaign issue and halt the practice of everyone receiving a return on their investment except the taxpayer.
ROI, or, return on investment, is a cornerstone of economics. It says that if an investor provides money to a new venture, or business proposition, start-up company, etc, that they are entitled to a share of the profits if that venture or business is successful. Taxpayers have been investing in new technologies and saving corporations with bailout money for decades. But, they have not seen their taxes lowered by returns on those investments paid back to the government. This great fleecing of the taxpayer must end.
Here is a classic example of how taxpayers are yet again going to be ripped off. HR6 just passed and it is a bill
To reduce our Nation's dependency on foreign oil by investing in clean, renewable, and alternative energy resources, promoting new emerging energy technologies, developing greater efficiency, and creating a Strategic Energy Efficiency and Renewables Reserve to invest in alternative energy, and for other purposes.
Note the word 'investing'. Now what this means is that U.S. taxpayers are going to put up money to fund basic research at our Universities and private research firms. Also, tax dollars will be given to oil companies, chemical companies, auto manufacturers, power companies to subsidize not only research but, the costs of implementation of the new found research results. What are these companies and corporations going to pay the taxpayers back if these new technologies produce net profits for decades to come? Zero, zip, nada!
The taxpayers are currently treated by Congress and the wealthy special interests as if every public dollar invested in any government underwritten research or technology was a complete failure, resulting in no investment return payment back to the taxpayers. If the shoe were on the other foot,
these companies and corporations would be in revolt against the government for not receiving a return on their investments. This double standard must end.
U.S. taxpayers have footed part of the bill for everything from Velcro to Computers, from road sign paint, to herbicides and carbon particulate scrubbers. But not a single dime of 100's of billions of tax dollars has ever been returned to the tax payer for their investment in that companies or corporations profitable discoveries and innovations. In fact, tax payers who purchase the products not only paid to invent them, but, continue to pay profits to those companies through purchase of those inventions for years, even decades afterward.
And government spending continues to grow, and taxes or the national debt also continues to grow. Every time Congress agrees to bailout a Chrysler, or underwrite fusion energy research the taxpayer should be entitled to a very small percentage of royalty payable to the U.S. treasury for every profitable sale by that company or patent holder for as long as the bailed out company remains profitable or that patent holder is receiving profits from the taxpayer invested new technology.
Folks, by 2012 America will be close to a 10 Trillion dollar national debt. And entitlement spending, global climate change, further terrorist attacks, natural disasters will all continue drive that number up until America is bankrupt. Corporations are going multi-national. Which means many of the corporations who benefit from American tax dollars in this way, will send their returns overseas to build jobs, infrastructure and markets in foreign countries like China, India, and Indonesia. The time has come for tax payers to demand the same right any investor in any other venue already enjoys, a royalty or investment risk premium on their investment dollars sent to private corporations and companies which underwrite invention, new technologies, and profitable new product.
Make this an issue in 2008 and beyond, and help move America toward a future where deficits and mountains of national debt are not the wave of the future strangling our nation economically and financially.
Comments
This is one of the most intelligent ideas I have read in many years. Where did you get this idea? Why hasn't this concept become a movement in American politics decades before this?
Good Show!
Posted by: James Tabor | July 15, 2007 9:56 AM