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You make it sound like there is money "lost". The dollars that are spent end up in the economy and go in the development of new materials and technologies that

by tobias2014 8y ago

You make it sound like there is money "lost". The dollars that are spent end up in the economy and go in the development of new materials and technologies that otherwise wouldn't have been developed. Whether there is a direct benefit to humanity of finding the fundamental laws of physics is another matter, but the way towards that has always been very fruitful.

pasbesoin 8y ago
E.g., enjoy your life-saving MRI? Thank research physicists. An often quoted figure, or range of figures, is that the U.S. space program has, per dollar invested, produced between 5 and 10 dollars of returns in commercial technology. I don't mean rockets and such. I mean things used in the everyday world around us. Oh, and a bit further afield from traditional physics, most of the novel drug discovery in the U.S. is developed with public dollars, not pharmaceutical dollars. Pharmaceutical companies convert (some) discoveries to commercial products, spending more money on later series trials and on marketing, than on any original research. And, many drugs were the results of "mistakes". Not what the researchers were targeting. You do research to learn novel things. If you already knew what your result would be, well... (I could jest, then you'd be a theoretician.) P.S. Let me also put it this way: You do research also to learn how to learn those things. Building new equipment, procedures, and understanding. And a lot of those pay off repeatedly, regardless of the particular result of the original research topic.
wallace_f 8y ago
>You make it sound like there is money "lost". The dollars that are spent end up in the economy This trickle down economics argument was used commonly in the Reagan era, and could be heard frequently in the 90s in conservative media. While it is correct that the money does not disappear (which in theory would generally just be a transfer of wealth too all money holders), the problem with the argumenr is that it is wilfully ignorant of the introductory economics lesson of 'guns vs butter,' as well as other lesons. Yes the money 'stays in the economy,' but what is it buying/producing? Someone just replied to me in another thread about the propensity to which Wall St bankers buy prostitutes and drugs. Leaders have bought us wars and domestic surveillance. An arguable reason to spend on basic science would have to do with money multipliers and a great reason would be return on technological investment, which you touched on. TL;DR good arguments exist for this spending, but probably not the trickle down economics one

pasbesoin 8y ago

E.g., enjoy your life-saving MRI? Thank research physicists. An often quoted figure, or range of figures, is that the U.S. space program has, per dollar invested, produced between 5 and 10 dollars of returns in commercial technology. I don't mean rockets and such. I mean things used in the everyday world around us. Oh, and a bit further afield from traditional physics, most of the novel drug discovery in the U.S. is developed with public dollars, not pharmaceutical dollars. Pharmaceutical companies convert (some) discoveries to commercial products, spending more money on later series trials and on marketing, than on any original research. And, many drugs were the results of "mistakes". Not what the researchers were targeting. You do research to learn novel things. If you already knew what your result would be, well... (I could jest, then you'd be a theoretician.) P.S. Let me also put it this way: You do research also to learn how to learn those things. Building new equipment, procedures, and understanding. And a lot of those pay off repeatedly, regardless of the particular result of the original research topic.

wallace_f 8y ago

>You make it sound like there is money "lost". The dollars that are spent end up in the economy This trickle down economics argument was used commonly in the Reagan era, and could be heard frequently in the 90s in conservative media. While it is correct that the money does not disappear (which in theory would generally just be a transfer of wealth too all money holders), the problem with the argumenr is that it is wilfully ignorant of the introductory economics lesson of 'guns vs butter,' as well as other lesons. Yes the money 'stays in the economy,' but what is it buying/producing? Someone just replied to me in another thread about the propensity to which Wall St bankers buy prostitutes and drugs. Leaders have bought us wars and domestic surveillance. An arguable reason to spend on basic science would have to do with money multipliers and a great reason would be return on technological investment, which you touched on. TL;DR good arguments exist for this spending, but probably not the trickle down economics one