The government's role, economically, is to do things that private industry wont do that need to be done. The space program was an example of this. Research into medical advances that will save the lives of poor people would be a good example. Work on transportation backbones, as this is generally too large a project for private companies. Currently we are facing peak oil and without significant investments in an alternate transportation system the US is going to be in very big trouble soon. Building a new system (which would probably rely mostly on rail) is not something that is within the capability of any one company, or in their best interests, but it is still a vital project that needs to be completed.
Firstly the space program was by no practical measure necessary, it was an extreme tax load to growl at a competing state.
Research into medical advances to save the lives of middle class and rich people are the only medical advances that can save poor people as prices fall through competition. To stifle the advancement race between pharmaceutical and medical companies is to stifle healthcare.
The transportation backbone can and has been built by private companies. They do it faster, cheaper and safer.
http://mises.org/journals/scholar/internal.pdfThe government has almost NO plan for peak oil, their idea is to kill Arabs and take their oil. In this case I agree, only something an oligarchy or government would get involved in. If you do not allow prices to reflect the true cost of oil you postpone the problem. If you allow people to solve the problem themselves prices indicate to them viable and inviable paths. If prices increase, telecommuting and commuting becomes orders more attractive than taking a car. If oil is subsidized and we keep waiting for the gov to save us we prolong and worsen the problem.
Of the $ 3.5 Trillion federal budget 3 Trillion goes to Medicare (789 Billion), Social Security (702), the war machine (690), income insurance (435), interest payments (203) and federal pensions (199). 1.9 Trillion of these goes to some form of welfare that would be much better spent my simply handing it back out to Americans and letting them decide what to do with it.
Note: very, very little is spent on items such as infrastructure. The science and infrastructure you speak of represented in the dept of Transportation, dept of Education, dept of Housing and urban development, dept of Energy, dept of Agriculture, NASA, the EPA, the National Science Foundation and using a stretch of the imagination, the United States Army Corps of Engineers account for a total spend of 296.2 Billion. That is a very sad 8.5% of the budget! Contrast that to the combined revenues of approx $ 4.2 Trillion of the energy, oil and automotive companies in the top 100 companies by revenue. Honestly I have more hope that Toyota develops an efficient electric car and Sony develops cheap solar panels.
We've been fed the line that the government is there to give us policemen and roads, this is simply a gross distortion of a fractional truth that is used to justify an immense tax burden.
"Citations"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budgethttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenueI agree with some of what you say, but I would like to make some key points that you may already understand. Please bear with me if that is the case. The "space race" and technologies developed at universities were meant for future industry - for the benefit of companies. This is an externalizing mechanism by the private sector and is a natural consequence of business capturing government.
Today, companies can't develop biotechnology because of their quarterly constraints. They push for public funding into universities in the hope that they can buy out researchers and patent the technology.
It wouldn't be so bad if the public could just benefit directly from the research without having to pay a company too. In this scheme, companies are glorified middlemen/marketing boondoggles. In fact, they represent tremendous inefficiencies in the economy. On the flip side, consider that government can do things that companies can't. They can run production at a loss. This is extremely important if you want to avoid things like economic depressions.