No, We're Not All in This Together. How the Super-Rich Are Cheating America.
Bezos & Gates & Zuckerberg were “standing on the shoulders of giants” when they started their companies. The tallest giant was the U. S. taxpayer, who paid for 70 years of government research to develop all the technology that a few well-positioned individuals eventually claimed as their own.
As Gar Alperovitz noted, “Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s the National Science Foundation spent $200 million to build and operate a network of regional supercomputing hubs called the NSFNET. Connected to the ARPANET, this network established Internet access for nearly all U.S. universities, making it a civilian network in all but name.” Government funding for technology goes back much further, as explained by Mariana Mazzucato: “From the Internet that allows you to surf the Web, to GPS that lets you use Google Maps, to touchscreen display and even the SIRI voice activated system — all of these things were funded by Uncle Sam.”
