Budgets tend to be somewhat compartmentalized. If a project in compartment X goes over its budget, that tends to come at the expense of other things in compartment X.
$8 billion was a huge amount in the science compartment. It is completely irrelevant that some other compartments might have had much bigger budgets.
It is completely irrelevant that some other compartments might have had much bigger budgets.
While you may consider this point unrealistic or unhelpful to the argument, it cannot be characterised as irrelevant. Adding the word 'completely' only weakens your case.
It's completely relevant if your point is that we nickel-and-dime essential scientific funding but spare no expense when killing brown people across the globe. You don't have to go to too much effort to understand that's what the grandparent was driving at.
Your definition of 'essential' and my definition of essential are vastly different, and we are both very interested in science. Imagine the difference between your definition and most Americans who wind up paying for the thing. I personally would rather see the $8 billion go to medical research or energy research with a closer time horizon than physics research.
Agreed. I'd like to see the energy industry fumble around with maps trying to locate oil deposits because this new fangled GPS-thing doesn't quite work right.
Personally I don't have a very strong opinion on where the funding should go at all, just that it should exist and that it should be increased by an order of magnitude at least. Even experts in a field can have a hard time deciding where to allocate resources, what hope do I have? And more importantly what the hell business does Congress have providing for these allocations? They don't know shit.
I would rather shovel billions at universities with little more than an unenforced request that they spend it on pure research, than allow Congress any control over scientific funding at all.
Mainly I just think that drawing attention to scientific funding as some kind of waste of taxpayer money when it is such a drop in the bucket is more about serving the interests of the American conservative establishment in villainizing intellectuals than actually solving a problem.
$8 billion was a huge amount in the science compartment. It is completely irrelevant that some other compartments might have had much bigger budgets.