> If Salk had this mentality, then Polio may stand up there with cancer and AIDS as one of the big 3 killers. If Salk had this mentality, the patent still woul

> If Salk had this mentality, then Polio may stand up there with cancer and AIDS as one of the big 3 killers. If Salk had this mentality, the patent still would have expired after 17 years and he could have used the money to try to cure cancer or AIDS. > we might have also tried to monetize the COVID vaccine and grind the US into an early depression with that kind of thinking. Three different companies developed a COVID vaccine and it's not the kind of market where you can make more money by charging a million dollars each to a hundred people than by charging $100 each to the insurance companies of a billion people. > Fund the science and make use of taxpayer money to advance society instead of giving billionaires tax cuts. "Giving billionaires tax cuts" is not the only alternative use for the money and isn't even necessarily a worse one. If someone is a billionaire because of regulatory capture and monopolistic practices then we shouldn't be giving them anything, we should be breaking up their companies and eliminating the laws they bought to concentrate the market. If they're a billionaire because they built an honest company that employs thousands of people and makes useful products for reasonable prices, that's the thing that gives the government anything to tax in order to provide roads and schools and provides people with jobs and goods and services. We want more of that. Taking more of the money away should only be done if the government's use for it is high value. Which, by definition, things with a poor cost/benefit ratio aren't.