Bloodbath for Science

The problem with the logic in this post is that it implies an unbounded amount of money funneled into research. In the real world, there's a bound on the amount of money that should be funneled into research. That bound should probably less than the amount of money it would take to bankrupt the supporting country. Any argument that doesn't even consider this question fails to impress me right out of the gate.<p>There isn't a government expenditure that can't be supported the exact same way and with virtually the same arguments, but the sum total of all these wonderful programs is that none of them are going to be funded at all in a few years when the funding entity is bankrupt and the dollars it can give you are worthless. Take a 20% cut now (and probably another cut soon) or a 100% cut not all that many more proposal cycles from now.<p>At some point the answer has to be <i>no</i>.

Can't we find $1.5 billion floating around in the military budget to cut instead of the funds that fuels science and innovation? Sure companies do a fine job of innovating but they don't do things like Fermilab, which have long term potential to change our world. Long term being far longer then stock holders in public companies would allow for.

Dear NSF and DOE,<p>Thanks for the internet, google, fusion and fission research, alternative energy research, quarks, thousands of PhD students, supercomputers, etc...<p>Given your general success with things, we no longer think it's viable to fund you. You see, we intend to buy 2,443 F-35 fighter planes over the next decade or so. It's unfortunate, but given that each one of those planes cost close to $130 million a pop (not including maintenance), we can't really justify science anymore.<p>Yours truly,<p>The American Public (specifically the red ones)

While I don't trust the government to pick the right things to slash, I am pretty sure there is a lot of bullshit research going on that could easily be slashed. It's probably not effective to not put any constraints on science research at all - there has to be some correcting factor like competition.

Actually, scientists aren't paid well.<p>There are a lot of talented PhDs who were willing to work for very little money ($30k), and these people will reluctantly leave.<p>The US is getting a more than its money worth. Cutting back will hurt the US more in the long run.<p>Many of them will be from overseas, who are doing important work that is impossible to get done in their own country, and this work is important not only to science itself but to humanity.

This is what we get as a nation for encouraging a political culture that doesn't value the work of government.

<i>And how does cutting $100 billion in government spending “help our economy grow and create jobs”? The immediate result will be the loss of something like a million jobs.</i><p>Those people will finally get to move on helping "make things that people want" instead of squandering stolen money.

Maybe this will encourage scientists to interact with the public more and ask for funding from them instead.<p>I don't even know why they're so important other than a vague "moar knowledge mean moar technology!"