Alex Tabarrok - Alex Tabarrok is associate professor of economics at George Mason University and research director for the Independent Institute. He is the author of Launching the Innovation Renaissance.

Jan 26 2012, 12:19 PM ET Comment

This is our national identity crisis in a nutshell: Do we want government spending half its money on redistribution and military, or re-dedicating itself to science, infrastructure, and health research?

Reuters

We like to think of ourselves as an innovation nation, but our government is a warfare/welfare state. To build an economy for the 21st century we need to increase the rate of innovation and to do that we need to put innovation at the center...