Did Gates or Jobs need a subsidy to grow businesses so big in 25 years they could pay off the US national debt with their spare cash?
Not even close. You could take all the money from the Forbes 400 and not pay off the $14 trillion we owe. To put it in perspective, if you took every dime from the 10 richest Americans, it would run Medicare for about 145 days. Of course then there would be no more Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, Oracle, Koch, Wal-Mart or Bloomburg.
If you took every dime from the Forbes 400 it would not pay off the debt.
These are scary numbers most people can't comprehend. You are right when you say we really can't afford to pour money into technologies that do not make economic sense. Maybe without all of these subsidies there would be more incentive to make cheaper technology.
Everyone is spinning the story about a German city that is making 300% of the power it needs from a massive solar plant and actually making $5 million a year from the excess. What they don't say is they paid $4 billion for the system. Payback period ... 700 years.
