“So we get hauled in front of the Congress for developing a product that’s free, that serves a billion people. OK? I mean, I don’t know how to say it any clearer,” Mr. Schmidt told the Post. “It’s not like we raised prices. We could lower prices from free to . . . lower than free? You see what I’m saying?” HARD TO ARGUE.

“Mr. Schmidt recounted a dinner in 1995 featuring a talk by Andy Grove, a founder of Intel: “He says, ‘This is easy to understand. High tech runs three times faster than normal businesses. And the government runs three times slower than normal businesses. So we have a nine-times gap.’ All of my experiences are consistent with Andy Grove’s observation.”

“Mr. Schmidt explained there was only one way to deal with this nine-times gap, which this column hereby christens “Grove’s Law of Government.” That is “to make sure that the government does not get in the way and slow things down.”

In other words: GET OUT OF THE WAY! This is not exactly what President Obama advocates. He wants Silicon Valley money, he wants Wall Street money, and he gets both. Yet when he and his liberal ilk need political pinatas or need, as in this case, to extort juice from other rent seekers, they bash both. For show or for real? Who knows?

Don’t you just love Obama voters facing Obama reality?

So what do we need? We need wealth, capital willing to take risks and create jobs in the process. We need entrepreneurs to translate that risk capital into successful businesses and create jobs in the process. Thus the article’s title character: Sergey Brin the Soviet-born American who founded Google!

Litan treats the “Startup Visa Act” jointly introduced by Senators Kerry and Lugar which would create a new, two-year visa for immigrant entrepreneurs who attract at least $250,000 venture financing in America. The visa would become permanent if the firm adds at least five non-family employees, attracts $1M in financing, or earns $1M in revenue. Fully 25% of the technology companies in the U.S. were founded by immigrants.

The idea is a good one but as the article points out could use some improvement. Why set such a high capital raising bar? A lot of tech companies were started with family money and credit card debt! And why limit the capital to U.S. sources? Don’t we want foreign investment that creates U.S. jobs? Finally isn’t immigration that brings mere wealth to the country beneficial to job creation? So why not issue visas based on permanent residence and at least $5M of new capital invested in U.S. businesses?

The H-1B visas–applicable to high skilled immigrants–are strictly limited, 65,000 in 2010 down from 195,000 in 2003. Tech firms have long complained about this limitation. As the article points out these visas are a likely source of the entrepreneurs that will start the next Google.

Intelligent immigration policy can create jobs, improved technology, capital, and favorable demographic patterns to boot. Hopefully Obama’s union bosses won’t object!

Tom Motherway

Mi Amigo

An oncologist friend visited this weekend and discussed the state of technological improvement in his speciality. In sum, his 40 years in the practice saw dramatic improvements and cures in various cancers that were nonexistence when he started. Whence this improvement? American research! Yes, those dedicated researchers with or without government or drug company funding discovered, found, or invented the cures that have people living today. Did the Canadian health system do it? The European? The whatever system? No, it was accomplished in the good old USA. Who benefited from it? Was it confined to our boarders? No, the world benefited. Perhaps, that’s one reason why government officials and wealthy individuals come to our hospitals to receive the premium treatment to cure their serious health problems.

So why does Obama want to go to the European model in healthcare? Americans have accomplished it and paid for it. Who will pay for it with Obamacare?

Come to think of it, who has defended the free world since WWI? Here we have paid in blood, life and dollars. Two world wars, the formation of world organizations and regional defenses paid for in our fathers and brothers blood and with our labors. Yet our current president wants to follow the “European model!” If he follows the French model, he will deny territorial overflight rights and start manufacturing white surrender flags. We have already seen him bowing to the Arabs and currying favor to his “mi amigo” Chavez, at the expense of Honduran democracy. He proposes further nuclear disarmament and reduction of warheads and delivery systems and wants to abandon missile defense.

Who will defend us? The French, with white flags?

Further reflection requires the reasonable person to question his antitrust policies, again gravitating toward the European model. Should Microsoft be penalized for not offering a competitive browser? Should Apple or ATT be penalized for offering the improved iPhone? Or, for that matter, should Boeing be penalized for an new jet airliner?

Who will innovate? Will our sons and daughters move to China or India to develop the next innovation? Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged may be prophetic!

So we now have the Obama, Pelosi, Reid triumvirate directing our lives with their various tzars. The latest “don’t tax you , don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree” scam focuses on the medical insurance companies offering high value medical insurance plans. Are these people stupid or are they socialists who are historically challenged? Have any of them cured anyone, served in the military in combat, invented anything of benefit to society? Do they resent those who have? Perhaps!

What they are doing to our grandchildren, born and unborn, with all their spending of their yet unearned income is simply immoral! Obama’s intergenerational immorality at its best!

Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.com