This is classic short-term MBA thinking. It completely misses that theoretical researchers are an integral part of a diverse research ecosystem, that researcher

This is classic short-term MBA thinking. It completely misses that theoretical researchers are an integral part of a diverse research ecosystem, that researcher diversity is more than the sum of its parts (or in MBA-speak, is synergistic), that some theoretical work eventually does become economically valuable as it filters into applied sciences, and that this might take longer than one or two quarters after publication.