[pydry]

Instead of trying to quantify research (not really measuable in any meaningful sense) perhaps ask yourself how physics has improved your every day life and then ask yourself which improvements you think society should have given up in exchange for a greater supply of quants.

Things like the microchip, wifi, rocketry, satellites, jet engines, etc.

If the answer is "none of it" that tends to suggest underproduction.

[AmericanChopper]

This is some rather flawed logic. The productivity of physicists at the time the microchip was invented doesn’t suggest anything at all about the productivity of physicists today, and the utility of productive physics research doesn’t suggest anything at all about the existence of non-productive physics research.

[pydry]

Are you saying that there is a better measure than past performance?