> What's the "ROI" of a well rounded populus that gets along and doesn't want to kill each other? Calculable. > What's the "ROI" of creating beautiful works o

> What's the "ROI" of a well rounded populus that gets along and doesn't want to kill each other? Calculable. > What's the "ROI" of creating beautiful works of art, or producing great culture? The academy doesn’t do this anymore and hasn’t for more than half a century. > What's the "ROI" of happiness? Is there any evidence to suggest college graduates are happier which account for differences in childhood socioeconomic status, lifetime earning potential, and similar confounding factors? > Sometimes the purpose of central government is to make a negative ROI into a positive one, because there are greater purpose than the return While I agree with you in principle, this rationale can be used as a cover for bad policy. You take a measure that is widely accepted as an indication of worth, and then insist that the system’s failure to produce that indication of worth may actually just indicate that it’s providing an intangible goodness that cannot be measured nor accounted for (beauty, happiness, etc.).