How would you have funded the Interstate Highway System, which was an almost immeasurable boon to commerce, without Federal funding? (And oh please don't give me the Libertarian toll roads argument. If ever there was a chicken-and-egg deadlock, public infrastructure is it in spades.)

When politics decides where money is to go, the market never gets a chance.

The interstate highways were authorized in 1956. To the best of my knowledge, there was commerce and travel prior to that.

Ask yourself what happened to the railroads. How much of passenger rail and mass transit died at the hands of massive tax subsidies for the automobile? Where do you think urban sprawl began, and the death of many inner cities? The railroads, which enjoyed a lot of government support in their own creation, probably had it coming.

A very good article on the role of government in transportation, relating eventually to commercial space, was written by G. Harry Stine.

I don't have time to search it down, but how about comparing the taxation rate against the poverty rate? It certainly is much lower nowadays, and--dare I say it?--that was accomplished through a transfer of wealth.

It was accomplished through increases in productivity, new technologies, individual initiative, and freedom to create new wealth.

There are a lot of people who think the reason the U.S. is so prosperous is because of the government redistribution of wealth. I like to think you're smarter than that. If this were true, than those nations that, according to the socialist ideal, stripped the most wealth from the productive and redistributed it, should be the richest countries on Earth, and those with a largely capitalist system should not. Want to tally them up?