In part I of this series I included federal support of
science among my highest priority items – things the federal government
absolutely ought to fund each year. Why science?
Technological advances are what is fueling much of America’s
prosperity these days, and science is what drives technological advances. The
federal government doesn’t actually put much finding into science – something
around $150 billion per year (about 3.5% of the federal spending), split roughly
evenly between defense and non-defense science. Defense R&D is mostly
applied science.
There is a difference between basic science and applied
science. The first deals with trying to understand nature, while the second
deals with using that knowledge to try to develop commercial or military applications.
In general governments have proven to be terrible at picking winners and losers
in applied science, as the Obama administration showed once again with its failed
attempts to fund development of solar panels. Private enterprise is much better
at this – they are more realistic and less ideology-driven than government in
their assessments of feasibility and likely success, and also more efficient at
using the funds. And in fact much of the military R&D is actually done by
private corporations. So applied science is better left to private enterprise, though there are a few quasi-government organizations, like the National Institutes of Health, that are the exception.
But basic science is the feedstock for economic growth. It
returns more economic growth for dollars invested than just about any other
government program. But private corporations have little or no incentive to do
basic science – the money is to be made in applied science; using science to
produce new or improved products that have a profitable market in the near-term. So it makes sense for the federal government
to support basic science as a way to ensure the long-term health of the
economy, and therefore the long-term health of the tax revenues needed to pay
for everything else.
That is why it is high on my proposed priority list.
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