[toast0]

Spending tens of billions every thirty years is pretty sustainable actually.

"Fundamental Research" may or may not pan out, but the things that happen along the way are often valuable... I don't think there's any practical applications related to generating Higgs Bosons, but it's interesting (at least for particle physicists) and there's a bunch of practical stuff you have to figure out to confirm them.

That practical work can often generate or motivate industrial progress that's generally useful. For example, LHC generates tons of data and advances the state of the art in data processing, transmission, and storage; that's useful even if you don't care about the particle work.

[ajam1507]

You could say the same thing about the world wars or porn. Any human pursuit taken to an extreme can produce knock-on effects, that isn't an argument in a vacuum to continue to fund any one area.

[toast0]

Spending tens of billions every 30 yesrs on world wars would be pretty awesome. Much better than what we currently spend.

Porn seems to be sustainably self funding; no need for government stimulus.

[ajam1507]

> Porn seems to be sustainably self funding; no need for government stimulus.

Only because you haven't seen the plans for the Large Hardon Collider