[Lloyd227]

Interesting read, but I can NOT subscribe to Mr. Will's fascination with federal funding of R&D. The government's role in promoting innovation is to protect the inventions, make it easier for the inventor to get his patent and protect his idea for commercialization, then to be allowed to actually keep the majority of profit from his idea.

THAT would be a proper function of the federal government.

[Uncle Ike]

” and protect his idea for commercialization, then to be allowed to actually keep the majority of profit from his idea “

No invention or idea - even if it’s world-changing - will bring our Nation out of its doldrums, as long as the only way it can be commercialized is to be manufactured overseas...

Abolish the anti-comptetitive regulatory alphabet agencies (and their underlying laws), and rationalize the taxation environment which rewards the entrenched and punishes the innovative - and then, maybe, we might breathe some life back in to the economy of this once-great Nation....