If at first you don't succeed, then drag racing isn't for you.
Companies prefer to put money in the pockets of shareholders or to hoard cash rather than to raise wages or invest.
Government support is not only investing in upstream areas like basic research, but also in downstream areas like applied research and early-stage financing for the companies themselves. This means there are great risks.
It's important that public funds be spent in research directions that are pushing market frontiers rather than working in existing areas. This means funding research not only on drugs but also on areas like life-style changes, even if the profit potential is lower for Big Pharma as you cannot sell that change as you can sell a medicine.
I often use the iPhone as an example of how governments shape markets, because what makes the iPhone ‘smart’ and not stupid is what you can do with it. And yes, everything you can do with an iPhone was government-funded. From the Internet that allows you to surf the Web, to GPS that lets you use Google Maps, to touch screen display and even the SIRI voice activated system - all of these things were funded by Uncle Sam through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA, the Navy, and even the CIA!
If we want growth today to be more innovation-driven, more inclusive and more sustainable, then we need a more active state, not a less active one. Yet we still hear the dogma that we should just fix market failure by focusing on science and infrastructure, and to "level the playing field. "
What is needed is both a New Deal in terms of mission-oriented investments but also a new deal in terms of a modern social compact - one that allows the state to socialize not only risks but also rewards. Maybe then innovation-led growth will also become growth that includes all of us.
That is a debatable point, whether South Africans are xenophobic. I don't you'd have the numbers that you have of foreigners if South Africa was xenophobic.
I like to know what I'm celebrating before I put on a party hat.
Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.
I have had players who are good, and who know they are good; I have had players who are bad and know they are bad; I have had players who are good, but who don't know they are good; I have had players who are bad, but who don't know they are bad. It is this last group that has won more games for me than the first three groups combined.