| > it implies an unbounded amount of money funneled into research Er, no; it's complaining about a 20% cut in research. How does that imply unbounded money? > the amount of money it would take to bankrupt the supporting country The budget that's just been hacked at -- the DOE's science funding, which according to the article provides most of the US's funding for basic scientific research -- is about $5B. The US federal budget is somewhere north of $3T. It is not the science spending that is going to "bankrupt the supporting country". > There isn't a government expenditure that can't be supported the exact same way and with virtually the same arguments That would be fair comment if the proposal were a blanket 20% cut across all government spending. But of course it isn't. The proposed cuts are in fact about $100B, or about 3% of the federal budget. So the question isn't "should basic scientific research be exempt from cutbacks when the country's finances are in trouble?" but "should basic science suffer 7x greater cutbacks than government spending as a whole?". (Actually, I bet these cutbacks aren't the whole story and there are other reductions going on that aren't covered by this list. So, who knows?, maybe the proposed cuts to basic science are only, say, at a 3x greater rate than the overall government spending reduction. That doesn't change the point I'm making.) |