I am an Atari Democrat!

I think that small start-ups should get tax breaks - especially if they encourage employee ownership! This is the stuff the tech geniuses are made of.

"Atari Democrat" is an old term (the 1980s) that meant the Democrats who push for tax breaks for smaller tech based companies. Think Al Gore, Paul Tsongas, etc. Different time - if you could run on that, and bring tech jobs to your neighborhood, you were a HERO!

It also meant that those tech companies had to be good. That was the fundamental mistake in State management from the 1980's and 1990's - the cities and states were in such a rush to lure tech to their areas, they didn't pay attention to market need, and ended up just giving the tech companies the sweetheart deals without any actual research.

But in today's day and age we want certain things:

- Small companies get a tax break
- Big companies - fuck off. If you want the tax break, you get it for your subsidiary and for your subsidiary alone.
- R&D is subsidized. Only true R&D (not marketing research): that R&D companies do to improve the product, or develop a new product in the first place.
- Progressive taxation, based on return and payoff from R&D - but get this, payoff from R&D gives you a tax break. That way we can reward R&D that follows our definition. This would be temporary. When the economy is doing awesome, like a good Keynesian, you have to tax during this time and stockpile cash.