>stop making movies until we end hunger. Or building interstates or sports stadiums or paying inflated union benefits and salaries, or military spending, etc.

>stop making movies until we end hunger. Or building interstates or sports stadiums or paying inflated union benefits and salaries, or military spending, etc. The problem is the above are all politicized and directly financially benefit some voters, thus have cheerleaders and other irrational actors holding up this spending and defending obvious corruption and abuses. Science, when done right, is non-politicized and doesn't financially enrich voters directly, so there's very little "I got mine" mentality here like there is with other programs. Many of which turn into "make work" programs (bridges to nowhere, etc), if not outright entitlements (welfare). Not to mention the philosophical and practical problems with welfare in general. Once you establish a system where being poor is favorable to not being poor, then who will pay for all these resources. As a Chicagoan, CHA housing is a lot better than what you can rent on your own unless you make a decent wage. My wife and I used to wake up every morning in the winter and shovel snow only to watch the CHA housing across the street have city employees do this for them. Hell, if the government is going to house you, feed you, shovel your snow, etc what incentive do you have to ever leave that system? None as far as I can see. Now we have an idle class of people involved in drug abuse and gang related crime and shootings, as well as epidemic of unwanted children used to further game the system for benefits. Give up on space exploration for the sake of the insatiable welfare state which inevitably creates massive ghettos, massive taxation, angry youth mobs, and religious radicalization? No thanks. We've watched this path unfold in Europe and want none of it.