Is John McCain's $300 million prize for car battery innovation a stunt? The proposal would give the prize money to whoever can come up with a viable car battery that is produced at 30 percent of the current of the costs.
Critics say McCain's "energy prize" is a gimmick, but it's probably the first such plan that offers a high enough dollar total to match the innovation required to make such a proposal work. After all, the U.S. government is only
offering $25 million for information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden.
Nation's like Europe have been offering prizes for innovation for years and with some success. And as Jonathan H. Adler
writes in
National Review:Another virtue of government prizes is that tax-payer dollars only get
spent if the prize goals are met. Traditional subsidies, on the other
hand, are paid out up front. Doled out in accord with politically
determined criteria, and often awarded to the most politically
connected firms, traditional subsidies often fail to generate anything
approaching a positive economic return.
![[RSS]](http://67.192.49.194/templates/images/rss_icon.gif){kind=icon}
Post A Comment