Broken

He said basic science is mainly funded by governments, not that basic science is only done by government funded Universities. Bell Labs was an organization that was the closest to being a privately funded research institution in the US, but these labs were part of a government-regulated monopoly, ATT. Even so, Bell Labs was mainly focused on applied research, not basic research.

Basic research developments which lead to huge technology developments include quantum mechanics, solid state physics, the molecular biology of proteins and DNA, nuclear physics, etc. These basic research developments were funded primarily by European, American and Japanese governments.

Except for weapons development, most applied R & D tends to be funded privately. Even so, governments often indirectly encourage private R&D through subsidizes such as tax breaks, development grants, etc. Applied R&D leads to new product capabilities and, therefore, increased sales and profits.

Since there is rarely a obvious application in basic scientific research, it rarely gets funded by private industry. Often there is a time-lag of decades before a basic research discovery makes it's way to practical applications. However, it has proven many times to be well worth the wait. For example, quantum mechanics was developed in the 1920s and 1930s, but it is the root science behind integrated circuits, fiber optics, lasers, advanced materials, and magnetic data storage.

Research universities, both public and private, are usually surrounded by a cluster of technology companies, which feed from the research and skilled people produced by the universities. Over the last sixty years or so, the US has invested the most public money into research and, as a result, has had a strong leadership in advanced technology. Recent funding cutbacks coupled with increasingly competitive research in other countries may well result in a loss of this leadership.




The US did not become highly industrialized (relative to the rest of the world) until after the Civil War. Europe, especially Great Britain, made huge (for the time), investments in US industry. Why? Because the US, far richer in accessible resources than Europe, was the best place to invest. China has recently passed up the US in foreign investment since it has a big resource advantage: a vast, cheap, and well educated labor pool.


Going to a gold standard would not stop a crash of the US dollar. If the world market demanded that the US pay in gold instead of dollars, the US would quickly be depleted of its gold reserves.

Going to a gold standard would not protect us from the results of a dollar crash either. The US budget deficit would no longer be covered by foreign investors except at very high interest rates (ask Argentina). The price of foreign oil and manufactured goods would skyrocket. These combined effects would be very recessionary. On the plus side, US manufacturers would be more price-competitive on the world market. However, US manufacturing output would have to grow by 30-40% to take up the slack. In the meantime, there would a lot of people out of work and quite a few busted billionares.