Should the US develop a new bomber?

[ebaycj]

The top tax rate from 1935 to 1965 was over 80%, yet we saw a period of technological advancement unmatched...at least since the initiation of the industrial revolution.

Maybe the high tax rate provoked a "use it or lose it" mentality among the wealthy?

Maybe their companies were more likely to use their many dollars to fund "risky" R&D, leading to said technological innovation, because their alternative was to pay exceptionally high taxes (80%) on those dollars as income. This would be the whole-corporation version of the department manager's dilemma: "I didn't spend my whole budget, so I need to spend it (just for the sake of spending it) before the end of the year (on anything we want, really), otherwise my budget for next year will be cut."

If the alternative is to pay either 80% tax on that money (as income), or pay corporate taxes on that money (as profit), maybe their answer is to re-invest that money in the company by funding experimental stuff that has a small chance of paying out, but if it does pay out, it pays out big.

 

[PrinceofWands]

Maybe the high tax rate provoked a "use it or lose it" mentality among the wealthy?

Maybe their companies were more likely to use their many dollars to fund "risky" R&D, leading to said technological innovation, because their alternative was to pay exceptionally high taxes (80%) on those dollars as income. This would be the whole-corporation version of the department manager's dilemma: "I didn't spend my whole budget, so I need to spend it (just for the sake of spending it) before the end of the year (on anything we want, really), otherwise my budget for next year will be cut."

If the alternative is to pay either 80% tax on that money (as income), or pay corporate taxes on that money (as profit), maybe their answer is to re-invest that money in the company by funding experimental stuff that has a small chance of paying out, but if it does pay out, it pays out big.

Or maybe the whole trickle-down concept (and general opposition to taxation) is a load of ignorant horseshit by greedy, self-centered fascist fucktards with absolutely NO ability to perceive the big picture.

 

[CycloWizard]

Except for all of recorded history, you're right, I have no support. Already brought up the high tax rates throughout most of US history, while we took the lead from Europe on innovation. You can also look at earlier periods across the globe where taxation was so extreme it led to an option between starvation or revolution, yet still mankind somehow managed to invent, well, pretty much everything you've ever seen or learned.

Your innovation is useless without commercialization comment is the most disgusting load of horseshit I've read yet in this thread. So, relativity, useless. Trig, useless. Scientific method, useless. Art, useless. Tools, useless. Oh wait, that's right...ALL of those things led to other discoveries, or were utilized with NO commercialization for thousands of years bringing us to where we are now.

Thought is purity, and it exists COMPLETELY separate from economy. Innovation is nothing more than these thoughts which expand our universe. The commercialization of those thoughts is nothing but greed, laziness, or exploitation of human failings.

If relativity never led to the development of a single product, what good would it be? What good is a piece of art if it's never put out for display? What good would the wheel be if you couldn't buy one for your car? An idea in someone's head doesn't help anyone else at all - it's the product(s) which result from the idea that give the idea its value. If you disagree, please stop using any products of scientific advancements and see how good your life is, even though you might know the scientific principles which were the foundation for that product. Let me know how you feel about the greedy bastards that made your computer, were lazy enough to install fiber optic cables to your house so you could post here, and how exploited you feel by the guy who designed the reactive distillation columns which produce the gas you put in your car, which was also designed by greedy, lazy, and exploitative engineers.

 

[Moonbeam]

If relativity never led to the development of a single product, what good would it be? What good is a piece of art if it's never put out for display? What good would the wheel be if you couldn't buy one for your car? An idea in someone's head doesn't help anyone else at all - it's the product(s) which result from the idea that give the idea its value. If you disagree, please stop using any products of scientific advancements and see how good your life is, even though you might know the scientific principles which were the foundation for that product. Let me know how you feel about the greedy bastards that made your computer, were lazy enough to install fiber optic cables to your house so you could post here, and how exploited you feel by the guy who designed the reactive distillation columns which produce the gas you put in your car, which was also designed by greedy, lazy, and exploitative engineers.

You have no reason to believe me and I have made sure you never will, but since the fourth grade, at a time before I knew what I was feeling, I begin to express gift to draw plans for machines and systems etc. to kill people, lots and lots and lots of people, some of which, as is the way of such things, years and years later came to fruition from others, and, thank God, some of which have not. These ideas are much more valuable in my head than on display and I thank whatever force it is in the universe that turned me away from my gift.

 

[ElFenix]

oh and if anyone actually thinks the actual marginal tax rate on anyone's last dollar earned was anywhere near 80% i've got a bridge to sell them


loopholes were big enough to drive walmart's daily shipment from china through. and i'm not entirely certain that long term cap gains rates were that much higher then, either (even bigger loopholes for those)

 

[rudder]

Bombers are useful in that they can loiter over a battle field area. A cruise missile can't really do that.

Sure they can. I remember the NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo. The cruise missiles loitered near the battlefield attached to B-52 bombers. The B-52's were never in danger and the cruise missiles were accurate.

 

[SammyJr]

yes I agree, many inventions come from private people, but with the government wanting to tax the higher bracket more, innovation is going to fall

Yes, because you have to be rich to have a good idea. No good ideas have ever come out of underpaid PostDocs at Universities or guys working on the assembly line.

 

[SammyJr]

Unless you want to compete with China and India for resources and global control, I suggest it's kept this way.

We're already losing that battle.

 

[CycloWizard]

Yes, because you have to be rich to have a good idea. No good ideas have ever come out of underpaid PostDocs at Universities or guys working on the assembly line.

I think you and PrinceofWands can take your circle jerk elsewhere unless you're prepared to answer my post to him above. Oh, and those underpaid post-docs? Their salary is fixed by the federal government (NSF and NIH).

 

[SammyJr]

Well ARPANET, the grandfather of the internet was originally designed as a network to allow scientists to communicate in the event of a nuclear apocalypse. It was developed by DoD.

And we do need a world super-power military. Why? To ensure we remain a world super-power. As for upcoming enemies, uh... China much? Sure they're not a military threat now, but in a few decades why not? They've made no secret about their desire for expansion or their willingness to use their military to brutal extremes.

Protip: Its bad for business to attack your customers.

Bottom line, allowing any significant part of our nation to atrophy simply because it isn't needed right this moment is a bad thing.

Tell that to the American manufacturing sector. Almost, everything is made in China, thanks to a devotion to all things Free Trade.

 

[ElFenix]

Protip: Its bad for business to attack your customers.



Tell that to the American manufacturing sector. Almost, everything is made in China, thanks to a devotion to all things Free Trade.

the peak year for american manufacturing was 2007, and we've been in a trough since then. almost all *cheap* stuff is manufactured in china. but that's not nearly the same thing.

 

[SammyJr]

Maybe the high tax rate provoked a "use it or lose it" mentality among the wealthy?

Maybe their companies were more likely to use their many dollars to fund "risky" R&D, leading to said technological innovation, because their alternative was to pay exceptionally high taxes (80%) on those dollars as income. This would be the whole-corporation version of the department manager's dilemma: "I didn't spend my whole budget, so I need to spend it (just for the sake of spending it) before the end of the year (on anything we want, really), otherwise my budget for next year will be cut."

If the alternative is to pay either 80% tax on that money (as income), or pay corporate taxes on that money (as profit), maybe their answer is to re-invest that money in the company by funding experimental stuff that has a small chance of paying out, but if it does pay out, it pays out big.

This argument is so often overlooked by low tax proponents, but for some reason, they'd rather depend on the good will and charitable nature of the companies to make decisions that promote employment and long term growth.

 

[SammyJr]

the peak year for american manufacturing was 2007, and we've been in a trough since then. almost all *cheap* stuff is manufactured in china. but that's not nearly the same thing.

That's all well and good, but if all that cheap stuff was made here, it would employ a hell of a lot of people. And yes, prices would go up but I'd rather pay Americans to make iPods instead of to warm a couch. These Americans would then have money to actually buy things rather than not and the consumer engine of our economy could get started again.

 

[Elias824]

The days of carpet bombing targets with big behemoth bombers is over, We tend to use smaller more precision strikes and our military should reflect that.

 

[SammyJr]

I think you and PrinceofWands can take your circle jerk elsewhere unless you're prepared to answer my post to him above. Oh, and those underpaid post-docs? Their salary is fixed by the federal government (NSF and NIH).

I never stated that I had a problem with commercialization of an invention or idea. I do think its an article of faith to believe that we have to give the rich guys low, low taxes to make things happen. If anything, low taxes on capital gains discourage long term innovation and growth because those things are high cost and take away from short term profits.

 

[Carmen813]

We need more damn logistical planes first.

 

[Brovane]

The days of carpet bombing targets with big behemoth bombers is over, We tend to use smaller more precision strikes and our military should reflect that.

Bombers can also drop precision weapons. They can just carry a whole lot more of them over a much longer range than a smaller aircraft can.

 

[Brovane]

We need more damn logistical planes first.

What do you mean by logistics planes? The US military has plenty of Transport Aircraft. Actually Congress is forcing the military to buy more C-17s than what the military actually wants to buy.

 

[Zorba]

Are you making an argument or just an observation of the current business reality? I hope it's the latter. The only risk involved in pushing new jet technology without military gravy is a business risk induced by the fact that all the entrenched players in the market defray most of their development and regulatory risk by putting their prototypes through the military wringer first. That being the case somebody would have to be either very stupid, or waaaaay ahead of the curve to take an engine from concept to sales without any military grants. If the military machine were turned off and the jet industry had to fend for itself, it would keep on innovating. It has happened before* (albeit occasionally). It could easily become the norm if global reality dictated it.

* Consider for example the ill-fated Williams EJ22, which put a three spool, five stage compressor into a 96 lb engine. The amount of innovation needed to get this engine onto a testbed was industry-shattering. It was all for a civilian design with specs that meant no military product could be pulled off the shelf to tweak. Granted it never finished development, but it probably could have if its timelines weren't rushed due to outside business factors. If Gulfstream had been the manufacturer requesting that engine you would have a pretty amazing turbofan purpose-built for civilian aerospace using groundbreaking technology that didn't appear in any military engine.

PrinceofWands was saying that military spending was not "even a terribly significant source of innovation." I was giving an example of where it has provided a very significant source of innovation. If the military money was turned off, innovations in Aerospace would be slower, because companies are not going to spend the massive resources required to perform R&D on products that will mostly lead to a dead end. Although I do agree that they would spend more of their own money than they currently do, but things would be done in a slower incremental fashion.

I really don't know much about the EJ22, except that it was based on the FJX-2 which was funded by NASA. And Williams got it's start designing and building engines for cruise missiles. So the EJ22 had a lot of government money to thank for making it to the test stand. If the engine wasn't packed full of risk and had a lot of potentiality Williams would've marketed it to other airframers.

 

[nonlnear]

PrinceofWands was saying that military spending was not "even a terribly significant source of innovation." I was giving an example of where it has provided a very significant source of innovation. If the military money was turned off, innovations in Aerospace would be slower, because companies are not going to spend the massive resources required to perform R&D on products that will mostly lead to a dead end. Although I do agree that they would spend more of their own money than they currently do, but things would be done in a slower incremental fashion.

It would probably be slower, but possibly not by all that much. In the current climate, no engine maker can leave the military teat without jeopardizing their existence. That much is certainly true. However the critical factor there isn't whether a company is or isn't getting billions of military dollars, but how different their development cycle is from the competition. If the military funding party ended for everybody, the industry would transition to a different looking development cycle and move on just fine.

I really don't know much about the EJ22, except that it was based on the FJX-2 which was funded by NASA. And Williams got it's start designing and building engines for cruise missiles. So the EJ22 had a lot of government money to thank for making it to the test stand.

Yes Williams is a military shop to the core, but that wasn't my point either. You have to be to survive in the jet engine industry, given that that is how everybody else operates.

As to the NASA funding of the FJX-2, yes it's government money. However it was a civilian project to the core, with design goals that had nothing to do with military projects. My point wasn't so much about the money as the design anyways. If everybody else develops new engines with government money, you've got to play along or die. The engine introduced radical technologies which no military spec had requested and probably never would. That size of engine is only useful (to the military) in missiles, and if missiles need a little bump in fuel economy they can just use fuel that's ten times the price of Jet A.

If the engine wasn't packed full of risk and had a lot of potentiality Williams would've marketed it to other airframers.

I don't think you appreciate the state of the market for very small turbofans at the time. There were no other airframers. Quite a long time later the VLJ market is just starting to show signs of viability. The Williams powerplant was pushing a lot of bleeding edge technology that no military spec had called for. I'd rather not get into a discussion of why the project was canned because its complicated, but the engine would have had a decent chance of finishing certification, despite being an admittedly "risky" endeavor.

 

[CycloWizard]

I never stated that I had a problem with commercialization of an invention or idea. I do think its an article of faith to believe that we have to give the rich guys low, low taxes to make things happen. If anything, low taxes on capital gains discourage long term innovation and growth because those things are high cost and take away from short term profits.

How does one commercialize something without money? As I said to PoW above, please let me know and I will quickly become filthy rich and won't mind it a bit if you tax me at 60%.

 

[Moonbeam]

A paranoid man once bricked himself in a cave and died of suffocation.

 

[werepossum]

I hate to say it but we need to take another look at space based weaponry. I think that is where the greatest threat lies now. The biggest thing to change war was the invention of satellites. Before satellites the only way you had of knowing if an enemy was coming was radar , if it was close enough, or spotters. Things like Pearl Harbor do not happen anymore because of satellites, you just can't sneak attack or do troop movements with them watching.

The countries with the best ability to knock out satellites or block communication to them will have the advantage. Destroy the military gps and you cripple our weapons guidance. A lot of it has fall back options but without gps it loses a lot of capabilities.

I know an engineer who quit DoD work because they replaced wire guided munitions in his department with gps. He said, and I agree, it was one of the worst decision they could make. Wire guided munitions were self contained systems .

One of Russia's biggest R&D and procurement areas is jamming. China is much the same. GPS is great for small wars, but in an all-out war with an opponent at/near parity would be useless. There are back-up systems though.

i dunno about relying entirely on something that needs constant radio contact with a base to work... seems... jammable... or hackable...

anyway, bombers nowadays don't fly over the target, they launch smart munitions.

as i said, B-52's don't really go over the target. and as much as the sea might be an good place to launch UAVs and missiles from, the B-52 can get those missiles to the area a lot quicker than moving a ship can. (and i'm sure they're working on an air-launch UAV that can be deployed from a B-52, if they haven't already done so)

an SSTO bomber might be interesting. 60 year old pipe dream, but interesting nonetheless.

Good points. We have a pretty good mix of bombers now, especially light- and fighter-bombers which are much more important in small wars. We need improvements in smart stand-off munitions and in autonomous UAVs much more than we need a new land-based bomber. The USA has been bleeding land bases for decades as the world gets safer, and the USAF's solution is to build bombers with ever-longer ranges. However a bomber capable of flying 28 hours has a truly horrible sortie count at best, so this isn't much of a solution.

Just a resurrection of the smart munitions programs (like Hornet and BAT) killed in the last two or three decades would be great. Our military has a horrible record of money wasted in funding development of projects that are later killed even though they are technically viable.

 

[werepossum]

Protip: Its bad for business to attack your customers.


Tell that to the American manufacturing sector. Almost, everything is made in China, thanks to a devotion to all things Free Trade.

By the time China is strong enough to attack the USA they'll own everything in it. Owning something is usually a powerful disincentive to blow it up.

 

[dawp]

wrong thread