Taxes and Revenues

The NASA Shuttle program is dead, the last landing going off without a hitch. Titusville, Florida, is in for some tough times in a state that already has 11% unemployment. There are 4 private companies that are going forward developing space ships, and their outlook is that demand from private enterprise will eventually grow very large.
American Capitalism and enterprise at its best.
However, all 4 indicate that some government funding is necessary to get to that point where Space Industry will be self-supporting, for much work has yet to be done, and existing demand is not sufficient. Boeing may not have come right out and said this, but Boeing is already at the military-industrial cantina sucking up some free lunch goodies.

This is fine with me: government funding = government payments from government revenues... also known as Taxes! Short-term funding in an extremely important field, one in which there are numerous foreign competitors.
But I'm OK with this. I was not OK with the Oil Industry subsidies, because such subsides have gone way beyond government assistance and are truthfully a welfare program for those companies. (I hold stock in Big Oil, so I do not complain too loudly.)
If oil companies were not subsidized, the true cost of oil would help straighten out our energy programs; a subsidized product, like oil, is a distortion and works against real "market" logic.

We were arguing about taxes at Hanaan's Diner today and finally I said to Hank Jakubowski that we should continue the argue tomorrow. In the meantime we would avoid all items that involve government subsides, hence government taxes.
Of course, I was counting on his being sufficiently worked up that he would agree to this, and he did!

So when we were getting ready to go, he had put his car keys on the table, squirreling in his pockets for chump change for the waitstaff. I grabbed the keys and walked out, hearing something that resembled a water buffalo bellowing behind me.

I the hot sun I reminded him:  no petroleum products, hence no gas... even if we allowed gas usage, the roads were paved using government money in part. He sputtered.
As I left, I yelled, "No food tonight, either! Agriculture subsidies!"
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