Page 22 - Issue 18

money, and by scientists who worked directly for
government organizations. Apple founder Steve Jobs was a
genius at developing attractive, user-friendly and useful
products – but the science that enabled him to transform
a dream into a product was not financed by stock market
investors but rather by taxpayers over a period of
decades.

Biden’s challenge

The involvement of public funding in the development of
vaccines to halt the lethal 21st century pandemic is just
one of numerous examples of the world economy’s
complete dependence upon governments and public
financing. From the moment the pandemic erupted, every
government in the world, no matter how “right-wing,”
“left-wing” or “centrist,” realized that the only way to
prevent the health crisis from becoming the worst
economic crisis in modern history was to provide an
economic safety net unlike anything ever seen before.
Almost every government in the world directly allocated
15-30 percent of its annual budget to saving the business
sector, the self-employed and workers who were laid off
or placed on indefinite unpaid leave.

When U.S. banks crashed in 2008 and the administration
bailed them out with taxpayer money, a fierce debate
ensued between the American right and left over whether
the bailout was justified or necessary. But the massive
bailout packages totaling trillions of dollars that have been
distributed in 2020 have enjoyed support from the entire
political spectrum everywhere in the world – it was clear