The Speculist

Research Losing Funding

FuturePundit Randall Parker comments on the many cuts in scientific research spending that the Bush administration has proposed:

Why does Bush think the US can not afford to spend more on science? Lots of reasons. Bush has signed into law a prescription drug benefit that is going to cost $534 billion over the next decade (and that estimate is probably low if past Medicare entitlement spending estimates are indicative). This is especially worrisome because as government spending on drugs increases the pressure to implement drug price controls will increase as well. By reducing the profitability of new drug development and price controls would lead to a drop in private sector funding of medical research. Other entitlements for the elderly are set to grow. The Iraq war and occupation are adding hundreds of billions of more costs. Bush is effectively robbing the future to pay for more immediate demands of various interest groups and for his expensive foreign policy pursuits.

I know my libertarian friends will argue that these cuts are a good thing, that research is best funded through private channels, etc. I'm inclined to agree with these arguments in principle, but the reality seems to be that a lot of valuable research will go unfunded if the government doesn't back it.

And maybe it should.

On the other hand, as Randall deftly points out, maybe the government needs to recognize that some research that is currently being cut might just hold the key to its own future solvency:

Biological research can lengthen our lives, make us healthier, smarter, and generally more capable. The biological research will eventually produce treatments that will extend youth and middle age. This will increase the length of time that people can work and therefore would allow us to entirely avoid the financial catastrophe of tens of billions of dollars of unfunded liabilties for care for the elderly that is looming as a growing fraction of the population becomes too old to work. The acceleration of anti-aging and rejuvenation research is the best way to solve the demographic problem of aging populations. See Aubrey de Grey's writings on strategies of engineered negligible senescence for a roadmap of the types of research we ought to be pursuing that could save us tens of trillions of dollars in money that will otherwise have to be spent on the aged. The ability to reverse aging will also unleash huge increases in productivity and economic growth that would produce orders of magnitude more wealth than the cost of the research spent to make it possible.

Energy research in another area which can pay itself back many times over. Newer energy technologies will reduce trade deficits, make our air healthier to breathe, and reduce the threat of terrorism by reducing the financial flows to the Middle East. Another benefit will be greatly reduced defense costs. Instead of cutting energy research we ought to launch a major effort at an additional $10 billion dollars per year aimed at obsolescing oil by pursuing research into a number of alternatives. While Bush purports to be big on national defense he misses the obvious point that energy policy is an essential element of national security policy and energy policy is going to become more important for national security in the future.

If we're going to have a government that spends lavishly anyhow, is it too much to ask them to invest some money in areas that will save us in the long run? I'm aware of the argument that says that if we just cut all the lavish government spending, there would be plenty of money in the private sector to fund anti-aging, oil obsolescence, etc. But I also recognize the fact that that isn't going to happen. Not any time soon, anyhow. Meanwhile, we're racking up debt and ignoring the approaches we might take to mitigate that debt.

Why?