Saturday, February 3rd 2007
Companies give away money?
My friend Andrew inspired this post. It started earlier this week from the Berkeley Newscenter:
Global energy firm BP announced today (Thursday, Feb. 1) that it has selected the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to lead an unprecedented $500 million research effort to develop new sources of energy and reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment.
A private company is giving money for research because the company will benefit from it. They are doing this for their own self interest and were not forced by any governmental agency to spend this money.
I remember when bond measures like Proposition 71 which allowed $3 billion in bonds (which will cost $6 billion by the time they are paid off) to publicly fund research came up. There was a cry that if the state did not sell bonds research into new fields would be too slow or go to other places. The private sector, especially medical science and oil, is awash with money. The government does not need to take out huge loans; private companies will give money to research.
The next time a bond measure or government expenditure comes up for debate; ask “Is this effort already underway with private funds? Can this be done without the taxpayer’s dime?” If it is clearly in the interest of one of the hundreds of companies out there the answer is probably yes.
