Cuts to Science Funding Are Anti-Economic Growth

The study, by a team of economists at American University’s Institute for Macroeconomic and Policy Analysis, is among the first efforts to quantify the risks posed by Mr. Trump’s cuts. Because the full extent of the administration’s plans is not yet clear, the researchers studied a range of scenarios.

Even the mildest approach — a 25 percent reduction in public support for research and development — would correlate to a drop in economic output.

U.S. gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, would be 3.8 percent smaller in the long term — a decline similar in magnitude to that in the Great Recession, which ended in 2009. The drop in output would be much more gradual than that downturn, taking place over years rather than months. But it would also be more lasting. Cuts to scientific research would sap innovation, leading to slower productivity growth and, as a result, permanently lower economic output.

The researchers estimate that a 25 percent cut to research funding would reduce government revenues 4.3 percent in the long term.

Larger funding cuts would have even greater effects. A 50 percent reduction in funding would lower gross domestic product nearly 7.6 percent, the researchers estimate, and a 75 percent cut would reduce it 11.3 percent — a larger decline than in any recession since the Great Depression.

NY Times

Economic historians argue over what contributed most to China's economic miracle between 1980 and 2010. I've read a book recently that argues a huge factor was China's refusal to adopt privatizing shock therapy policies during market reform debates that were conducted in China in the 1980s; privatizing shock therapy policies that resemble the privatizing thrust of DOGE and Project 2025 today, notably. But typically the biggest contributing factor mentioned as foundational to China's astonishing economic development is Deng Xiaoping's massive investments in education, science, and research, after taking over China in 1978. Again, near the opposite of what the republicans are doing right now. Or look to US history. The success of the industrial revolution in the US in the late 1800s is typically credited with large investments in scientific research and university education. Neolibs like to grouse about how taxes and regulations are anti-economic growth. Want to know what's really anti-economic growth: anti-science culture war politics.