‘Tis the season that parents and prospective students descend on college campuses across the country. During April Visit Days at Colgate, we see a steady flow of wide-eyed high school seniors with proud, pensive, and inquisitive parents in tow. I always enjoy speaking to prospectives and their parents even when the parents are a little over zealous. Normally, I get to speak to the prospectives who are not only interested in physics, but are also interested in pursuing astronomy. Parents always ask the question what kind of a job can my kid gets if they get a degree in astronomy. My answer is pretty standard. For professional astronomers, there are two main career paths: academia or research scientist. For those just wanting an undergraduate degree, I let them know that their child will be a problem solver with sophisticated math and computational skills. Since our economy is based on workers with these types of skills, I imagine they will do just fine in the workplace. As much a I try not to, I also find myself at some point in the conversation mentioning the status of funding for basic science research. After discussing the status of NSF funding with a prospective student’s parents the other day, I decided to do a little poking around to see how the US is currently spending its money and compare how research funding compares with other areas of spending. Here’s what I was able to find quickly (mostly from government websites), with my hopefully pragmatic take on the numbers.
$65.9 billion is the amount allocated for basic civilian science research in President Obama’s 2015 budget. Nearly half of that, $30.2 billion is designated for the National Institute of Health (NIH). Nearly half of the other 50% goes to NASA with $5 billion for science research and the other $12.46 billion going for space exploration (loosely defined). The National Science Foundation (NSF) is requesting $7.255 billion for 2015. I’m not sure how this differs from what is in Pres. Obama’s budget. The total science research budget request of $65.9B is 1.69% of the total $3.901 trillion dollar budget. In other words, that’s less than 1/50th of the budget.
If we estimate the current population of the US at 317 million people, the total budget breaks down to $12,305 per person with $207 going toward basic scientific research. For $200 per person, we get all of our advances in the sciences with nearly $100 of that going into health-related research via the NIH. If you compare that with what a visit to the doctor costs, it should sound like a small price to pay to cure cancer, fight Alzheimer’s disease, fix spinal chord injuries, and any of the other numerous illnesses and diseases our researchers are trying to understand and treat.
Let’s now compare the basic research spending to the Department of Defense (DoD) budget request of $495.6 billion dollars. If it weren’t for the sequester, this number would likely be well over $500B. That’s 12.7% (roughly 1/8th) of the budget or $1563 per person to maintain the most technologically advanced army in the world. However, I’ve seen other estimates that include defense-related spending that increases the fraction closer to 20% of the overall budget ($780.2B or nearly $2500 per person) For comparison, France, Germany, and UK combined are expected to spend $149B on defense in 2015. That’s less than a third of the US DoD budget and less than 1/5th of the overall US spending on defense. How does that work out per person for these three less populated countries? $720 per person.
For a second, let’s look at the money budgeted for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The NEH’s budget request for 2015 is $0.146B. That’s right, there is a zero before the decimal point. And for some folks, that’s still too much. In fact, if you are Paul Ryan, the conservative appointed guru of the US budget, you want to eliminate the NEH completely. As you can see, it would be a huge cost savings!!! As a self-proclaimed pragmatist, I actually fail to see the logic in cutting a program such as the NEH. The budget for the NEH represents, get this, 0.003% of the US budget. Instead of completely cutting a 100% of a program that does a lot of good with very little. Why not cut 1% from a program that probably can save that much by spending their money a little more wisely, like the DoD. A 1% cut in the DoD budget would fund the entire NEH for almost 34 years. Yeah! Big numbers can be surprising. Given the return to human development and the importance of creativity in all forms to advances in science and technology and, by extension, emerging economic markets, the negligible budget of the NEH should never be threatened. But, who takes the time to really dive into these numbers on their own to see just how ridiculous the budget saving measure proposed by our elected officials actually are? In fact, Paul Ryan and other partisan hacks are just taking aim at programs they don’t understand nor lack the insight/good sense to see the value of.
Returning to the big dollar items, what if we spent money on defense like our European counterparts? The DoD’s budget would be $228.2B, which would translate into a savings of roughly $260B dollars in 2015. Would we have better roads? Or better yet, would we have a better public transportation system? Would we have better schools? After all, the 2015 budget for education is $69 billion, or only a little over a fourth of what we would save. Would we have found a cure for many cancers? Would we have solved our energy problems with research and development into sustainable energy production? Would we have rebuilt our agricultural industry to produce food in a more sustainable manner, while appreciating the need for biodiversity among the edible plants we grow? Would we have been back to the moon or even have sent people to Mars? Would we have cleaned up the environmental disasters like the Exxon Valdez and the BP oil spill in the gulf? Would we have made our underground mines safer for our coal miners? Would we have done a better job of protecting our water sheds? Would we enforce regulations protecting our oceans and fisheries? Would we have refurbished our aging infrastructure? Are these not our priorities? If not, what are our priorities?
At the same time, I wonder who is getting rich off of the $500B we spend on defense? What role are they playing in convincing us to accept the status quo of spending 20% of our budget per year to defend ourselves from the boogey man. Perhaps, I don’t get it because I don’t fear for my safety as much as the next person. I’m also not one of these people who feel that I should have the right to carry a weapon everywhere I go because I need to defend myself “everywhere I go.” Perhaps, we wouldn’t feel the need to defend ourselves from mentally disturbed people if we committed resources to caring for them. In the long run, I would rather see society work better for everyone than feel like we could repel a simultaneous attack from the Russians, the Chinese, and ET.
In the end, our spending should reflect our priorities. Instead, our spending now reflects the priorities of a country I don’t recognize.
The Hillbilly Astrophysicist 