I gave up on believing this is temporary some time ago. We're stuck in a negative feedback loop.
The current crippling of science and education will only hurt the economy more. The economy is not like the weather something that just happens, and that will improve if we just "wait it out".
If anything, it would be helped by massive investments in science and space projects. It injects money in the constructive and innovative parts of society. The focus is too much on Wall Street which are basically toll takers.
Around when Bush was re-elected, I think. Although it accelerated in the last recession, this is not something new.
I don't think it's about "the economy" at all. A lot of research has been done during periods of much bleaker economy than there is now. Maybe it was the cold war (and earlier country-level competition) keeping people sharp.
So 6 years? That's not a long time as these things go.
In my question I was going to add that if it's less than 5 years you are not waiting long enough, and 10 is more realistic. (But decided to just leave it as a question.)
The last internet bubble was 10 years ago, and only now are we are starting to talk about about an upswing again. Economic cycles are measured in decades.
Notice the downturn right before you gave up? Even today we are still not higher than we were in 06. When you start to see the graph look like it does in 88 to 99 then things will turn around.
Maybe you're right, we'll see. A good climate for long-term science would be a sustained, growing economy, instead of the bipolar downswings/upswings that we're seeing the last decade.
Otherwise: There is a new upswing, all new projects, talk about going to Mars. Then a new crash, it's all cancelled again.. and so on.
I agree about a stable economy, it's hard to do long term science if available resources keep changing.
I found this graph: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Real+Gross+Domestic+Pro... (Switch it to logscale.) The most obvious thing I notice about it is the totally flat result after 2000, then improvement (but not as fast as before), and now back where we started.
The problem with this idea is that when things are defunded, people leave the field and do other things. And they don't come back. It's not like science is a spigot you can just turn on when you want and then turn off again.
Look at the situation with nuclear energy, over the past two decades noone in their right mind (without tenure) would have gone into nuclear energy research. The result is that now, when people are once again talking about the need for new reactors and whatnot, the field is a pale shadow of what it was 30 years ago.
This is why long-term efforts like research can't be subject to the year-by-year fluctuations. "Disinvesting in the University of California is like eating our seed corn," is what the UC researchers said about the cuts to the UC budget, which applies equally well anywhere else.
The current crippling of science and education will only hurt the economy more. The economy is not like the weather something that just happens, and that will improve if we just "wait it out".
If anything, it would be helped by massive investments in science and space projects. It injects money in the constructive and innovative parts of society. The focus is too much on Wall Street which are basically toll takers.