U.S.A. fact of the day, *Jump-Starting America*
The United States, as of 2014, spends 160 times as much exploring space as it does exploring the oceans.
That is from the new and interesting Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream, by Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson, two very eminent economists. And if you are wondering, I believe those numbers are referring to government efforts, not the private sector. I am myself much more optimistic about the economic prospects for the oceans than for outer space.
Most of all this book is a plea for radically expanded government research and development, and a return to “big science” projects.
Overall, books on this topic tend to be cliche-ridden paperweights, but I found enough substance in this one to keep me interested. I do, however, have two complaints. First, the book promotes a “side tune” of a naive regionalism: “here are all the areas that could be brought back by science subsidies.” Well, maybe, but it isn’t demonstrated that such areas could be brought back in general, as opposed to reshuffling funds and resources, and besides isn’t that a separate book topic anyway? Second, too often the book accepts the conventional wisdom about too many topics. Was the decline of science funding really just a matter of will? Is it not at least possible that federal funding of science fell because the return to science fell? Curing cancer seems to be really hard. Furthermore, some of the underlying problems are institutional: how do we undo the bureaucratization of society so that the social returns to science can rise higher again? Will a big government money-throwing program achieve that end? Maybe, but the answers on that one are far from obvious. This is too much a book of levers — money levers at that — rather than a book on complex systems. I would prefer a real discussion of how today science has somehow become culturally weird, compared say to Mr. Spock and The Professor on Gilligan’s Island. The grants keep on going to older and older people, and we are throwing more and more inputs at problems to get at best diminishing returns. Help!
Still, I read the whole thing through with great interest, and it covers some of the very most important topics.