There’s been lots of talk on the science blogosphere the past few days about the stimulus package going through Congress. On Friday, it was believed that the National Science Foundations’s piece of the pie would be cut out completely, and that NASA would receive half to allotted funding. To be honest, I couldn’t get too worked up about it. After all, this was extra money from the stimulus, not the budget that had already been decided on. Also, I considered the economic stimulus package to be a way to boost the economy in the short term, and that’s not the goal of science. My friend Nagini pointed out that a healthy economy needs both short and long term investments, and that science in a worthy long term investment. I agreed with this, and I also see how paying scientists is just one more way to give distribute money to those who will (hopefully) invest back into the economy. But that’s a weaker argument, since you could just give everyone money… again… and hope that works. Anyway, Hank Campbell at Science 2.0 explains his viewpoint of the package, and puts his finger on what was bothering me, that science is not a short term investment. So, before running to grab at whatever little spare change we can get in the short run, check out this alternate viewpoint. We don’t want to hurt science itself, after all.
Also find me at…
-
About the Noisy Astronomer
I’m a 7th (and final!) year graduate student in astronomy. My thesis has focused on radio astronomy instrumentation. That means, I get to build cool telescopes that will open up new frontiers in the universe. I also love to teach, both in a classroom setting and informally. I'm happy to talk about the universe with anyone who will listen, and I am skeptically curious about all things.
5 responses so far ↓
Mark Whitis // February 10, 2009 at 06:20 |
Ultimately, the issue of science funding isn’t one of a short term vs a long term investment but one of a short term bailout vs. a combined short term bailout and long term investment in one.
Investments in science can have leverage. If you send out a stimulus check to someone, they may spend money and help keep businesses afloat but you run up debt. If you bail out an industry, you may keep it afloat but you also run up debt. You may, if you are lucky, stave off catastrophy in the short term but in the long term you still have to pay for it. Investments in science and technology also keep money in circulation in the short term which helps keep businesses afloat but you also (on average) create wealth in the long term to pay back the debt – and then some. You can’t keep the economy going long term just by running up more debt – that is a big part of how we got into this mess in the first place. Science is BOTH a short term and a long term investment.
In the short term, science keeps our most skilled and productive employees employed, helps keep the scientific equipment and materials suppliers afloat (or expanding), keeps their mortgage payments up, keeps the supermarket employees and farmers employed, helps keeps the plumber employed, helps keep the colleges running, etc. Direct spending due to science funding would also be largely on domestically produced goods and services rather than imported commodities.
Where ever you inject money into the economy, that money tends to circulate and produce indirect benefits but the point of injection may make a significant difference, short and/or long term.
Money spent on the space program returned something like an order of magnitude more money into the economy. Everything electronic is a spinoff of the space program, which produced the integrated circuit. Yet our current NASA budget is 1/3 (in terms of buying power) what it was during the peak of the apollo program (and NSF funding is about 1/3 as much as the NASA budget).
Federally funded science research has provided an annual return on investment (averaged over the long term) of 25-50%.
http://cssp.us/our-fourth-decade-of-cssp-leadership.html
Borrowing money at 10% interest to invest in something that returns 40% interest, is a net win – it allows you to borrow now without having to pay the piper later. Looked at another way, for every dollar we spend on science we can spend something like $3 on other aid that doesn’t produce a return, effectively for free. The more we spend on science, the more we can spend on other aid. By holding back a little of the proceeds to make the science funding permanent, you avoid the problems of intermittent funding.
The economic might of the US was the result of decades of wealth creation which has been largely replaced by wealth extraction which has brought our economy to its knees. Science is wealth creation.
Given global warming and peak oil, though, energy related research may be the most important in terms of preventing the next financial crisis. Research that ultimately lowers health care costs could also have significant leverage.
If you look at the marginal effect of dollars spent in various areas, funding in many other areas may pay for itself, in fun house mirror economics, by reducing the loss relative to the status quo. Science can pay for itself and improve over the status quo, marginally speaking.
It is a shame that we don’t have the skilled labor to take advantage of rapid drastic increases in science funding that could ultimately finance the entire recovery – and then some.
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, just a portion of the recover, at a cost of $800 billion (before interest) is as much money as we have spent on NASA in the last 50 years (adjusted to 2007 dollars). NASA is currently 35% of all academic research spending. It looks like we are currently (2008/2009) in the process of spending more money to attempt to bail out the economy than we have spent on academic science research in the last 50 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
Nicole // February 10, 2009 at 12:25 |
Hey Mark! Thanks for your thoughtful response. I guess my worry is that science will suffer from being tugged around in a political game. Unfortunately, the only way it seems to invest in long-term, high-risk, high-yield investments in science is to go through politics. Yet if scientific gets a boost of funding here and there, but isn’t consistent, certain fields and labs may never recover during downturns and good scientists will be lost.
Also, a friend of mine brought up a good point… if we’re including long-term investments in this stimulus plan, including funding that won’t be dished out for another few years, doesn’t it feel like the plan is being a bit rushed? Shouldn’t they take their time deliberating on things that really will affect the long term?
Finally, I worry about the stimulus package in general, since it’s not money being “injected” in from nowhere, but collected and redistributed. That may help loosen up some cash that would otherwise be held tightly in a time of panic, but it’s not like a cash bonus.
Bente Lilja Bye // February 11, 2009 at 06:07 |
In Scandinavia we have a deep admiration for the way Finland handled their economic crisis in the early nineties. They put almost all their money on science and technology and out came several industrial and financial success, Nokia being perhaps the most well known. On top of that it was all done in about 5 years time.
Nicole // February 11, 2009 at 12:11 |
That’s impressive. Good to hear, too! Although, in the current cultural climate of the US, that won’t be happening any time soon. Science is too “elitist.”
WoodEngineer // February 11, 2009 at 12:44 |
Science and technology are always the way forward in my opinion. If we look at history it tends to tell that story. I’d love to see more money going into good science projects. We had about half of our NASA funding cut because they simply don’t have the money.