I'm trying to say that having a society of people breathing in leaded gas would be insanely expensive. Both in terms of lost productivity from stunted brain dev

I'm trying to say that having a society of people breathing in leaded gas would be insanely expensive. Both in terms of lost productivity from stunted brain development, and actual acute symptoms. Public money was crucial to unbiased understanding of that, and lead to prevention. How much money do you think that saved/grew the economy? For like 0.5% of the Federal budget. That's just one (big and easy to recall) example. There are countless. Spending public money on public research grows the economy. Cutting it is penny wise and pound foolish. I work at a biotech. We have $150 million in private funding. My biotech wouldn't exist, and I wouldn't have a job if it weren't for decades of public research doing the foundational work that allows us to target a protein to make a drug to help people. None of that would exist if not for NIH, NSF etc