When you're spending billions/trillions of tax dollars, you're going to have successes here and there.

There's no question that the government has some successes to point to. I actually agree that government is decent at some basic research.

Then again, the private sector has had plenty of successes as well.

My main objection is that we don't really understand the opportunity cost of having the government spend the money vs letting the private economy do so itself - yet we let the government continue to make the decisions on what's fair.