[andrewlgood]

Silly argument. Everything in gravitational physics goes back to Newton? Who cares about Convex Optimization if you do not undertand gravity? Math goes back to Euclid and the Greeks?

Mankind has consistently built upon existing knowledge. "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. (Newton)"

IMHO, what we are seeing is the US was generating 50% of the world's GDP at the end of World War II. In that era it could afford to many non-economical things - Marshall Plan, funding research at universities, etc. The US is no longer the dominant economic engine. It actually has to prioritize its spending. Money spent on research is money not spent on food stamps, housing the homeless, defense.

What is never mentioned in these discussions is how much money has been spent on research that did nothing. Advanced nothing. When that is factored in, what is the ROI of university-based research?

[mainecoder]

this is silly money spent on research is always going to be better spent than the numerous misuse of tax payer dollars spent. ICE has a bigger budget than NASA and NSF combined consider this how little is science being valued. We have gained tremendously from NSF and NASA and now we are seeing that only SpaceX and maybe Rocketlab could hold a candle to China's CNSA and their private industry which is quickly going to be catching up because they have the ability to produce it in scale.

[Ar-Curunir]

Oh no! I wonder what the US could have achieved if instead of spending 10s of billions of dollars per year, it could instead have used those to fund more trillion-dollar wars!!