I agree with your other points. But the AIG bailout not only saved filthy rich bankers, but saved the entire world economy.
Private pensions would have been wiped out, who own 95% of the stockmarket. The pensions were chasing gains and were quite happy while the returns were fat. The government cannot afford its own pension promises anyway and would have been wiped out.
Big science projects are paid in installments over many years. If the financial system collapses, for sure the big projects will be mothballed immediately.
The point is that governments have this type of money. In spades. Pretending we're not properly prioritizing one type of research or another is a farce - if you can convince anyone to invest in nuclear fission reactors, whether they do that won't really be affected by how much fusion research is happening. That's not why we don't have nuclear fission right now, but shutting down nuclear fusion might just ensure we never get either.
You think governments have this type of money in spades?
The US does not. We're in a major debt crises and have issues funding our fundamental operations; beyond the immediate government funding, we have severe problems with spending (IE, we can't pay the interest on our spending with our tax revenues).
You're not in a debt crisis, US interest payments on existing debt is about 4% - at most - of the national budget, and your government is shutdown because of a procedural issue.
I strongly suggest you actually lookup the budget figures.
Are you really this pedantic? I used an 'and' and a 'semicolon'. If you parse my sentence you will see I made no such implication directly that the current issue with the House of Immature Children is the cause of, or effect of, our debt crisis. Anyway, do you disagree with Wikipedia? """"Debt crisis is the general term for a proliferation of massive public debt relative to tax revenues, especially in reference to Latin American countries during the 1980s, and the United States and the European Union since the mid-2000s.[1][2][3][4]"""
"We're in a major debt crises and have issues funding our fundamental operations; beyond the immediate government funding, we have severe problems with spending "
Like many wikipedia articles in areas where there has been intense political propaganda efforts, the one on debt crisis [1] which you quote but do not cite engages is badly confused and influenced by propaganda -- and the four sources for the sentence you quote are an opinion piece, a blog post, an infographic, and broken link, none of which (except, perhaps, the content which once was at the broken link) directly support the thesis of the sentence. By Wikipedia's own standards, that article is bad.
And while you say that the current issue with the House isn't the cause or the effect of the debt crisis, the only US examples of so-called "debt crisis" linked from the Wikipedia article you lean on are the current and 2011 debt ceiling debates. So, its ironic that you ask "Anyway, do you disagree with Wikipedia?"
Anyhow, the defining characteristic of a debt crisis is default risk, not debt vs. tax revenue (debt service cost vs. GDP -- not total debt vs. GDP -- is probably the best "easy" numerical measure for fundamental default risk, but the real source of default risk in the US is political games like the ones you discount from the "House of Immature Children".)
So, you're saying we're at a default risk not a debt crisis. OK, I used the wrong term above. Please substitute it as needed; my argument remains the same.
> So, you're saying we're at a default risk not a debt crisis.
No, I'm saying that debt crisis is equivalent to default risk, and that the only significant way in which we are in either (the two being the same) has nothing to do with economic or fiscal fundamentals -- the resources to service the debt are readily available -- and solely to do with the present political shenanigans.
actually, big projects often have to be maintained because otherwise, huge numbers of highly paid scientists are let go. It's easier to shut down short-term, small-employee projects (like annually funded grants).
I agree with your other points. But the AIG bailout not only saved filthy rich bankers, but saved the entire world economy.
Private pensions would have been wiped out, who own 95% of the stockmarket. The pensions were chasing gains and were quite happy while the returns were fat. The government cannot afford its own pension promises anyway and would have been wiped out.
Big science projects are paid in installments over many years. If the financial system collapses, for sure the big projects will be mothballed immediately.