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Summers is back in the picture, high up in the Obama admin.
Don't look to President-elect Barack Obama's chief economic advisor to direct any of the massive economic stimulus package toward funding for science and technology. When asked by Manufacturing & Technology News at a recent event at the National Academy of Sciences if there was a need for some of the stimulus to support R&D, and in particular the thousands of scientific grant applications that are going unfunded, Lawrence Summers, incoming director of Obama's National Economic Council, responded: "You're not going to much like my answer but I guess it won't be the first time I gave an answer that wasn't 100 percent diplomatic....In the context of a short-run macroeconomic stimulus, that is to say, programs of stimulus that are explicitly temporary, it does not strike me that running up the research budget and then running down the research budget is a terribly rational way to run a country."
Summers was quick to note that he believes there needs to be an increase in federal R&D funds for the sake of the long-term health of the U.S. economy. "There is an important role for more science....but while more may always be better, a lot of ramping up and ramping down comes with very substantial inefficiency," he said.
Obama's stimulus package would increase the short-term federal budget deficit, but the intention is to build the economy in such a way as to provide long-term growth in federal revenue, said Summers. There is a "certain logic" to providing tax cuts for two years, and for accelerating investments in infrastructure that have been cancelled due to state budget shortfalls. There should be temporary federal investments in renewable energy, in information technology in the health care sector to lower costs, in universal broadband and pervasive wi-fi. "I don't think turning a science program on and then turning it off has an enormous logic," he said. "So that is the sense in which science as a short-term stimulus doesn't seem quite right to me."
Over the long term, robust investments in science and technology will be perhaps the only driver of future economic growth, and there needs to be "much more public support," said Summers. "Basic science is basically very, very important....On the one hand, only government can provide the support at the most basic level and on the other hand, the track record of governments in picking winners and losers -- in deciding what are the most fruitful industries -- is not hugely encouraging over time and in the quality of its judgment. So I would be tilting a bit more towards basic research in part in the conviction that there are lots of examples: the pure mathematics of factoring algorithms is just one example of where what seemed like the most abstract and irrelevant thing actually turned out to be the source of very substantial national security impact and a very substantial commercial benefit."
Here are excepts from Summer's after-dinner talk hosted in October by the National Academies' Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy:
[..]
What is the transformative activity that is going to be like the interstate highway system, the building of suburbs, that's like electronics or the Internet? What is the next thing going to be? Having the next thing, making sure it drives the economy has to be of profound importance.
Many say it's renewable energy, but if you think about it, renewable energy is more defensive than offensive. It will prevent the price of oil from spiking to a ludicrous extent. It will have very substantial environmental benefits, but at the end of the day renewable energy ends when you're plugging something in the wall and you're getting electricity like you used to. It doesn't end in a totally new capacity to do new things that were previously un-contemplated, like my cell phone does or the Internet.
Biotech? Maybe. But how much of GNP is going to be touched? Pharmaceuticals, healthcare, agriculture, certain part of materials science. But is the pervasiveness quite there? Next wave information technology? Maybe. But what are the technologies that the military has today that civilians will have 10 years from now that will be transformative? How many of them are there? What will their impact be? I don't know the answer to the question. But I do know that the underlying rate of growth that history suggests the dissemination of pervasive technologies is a profound issue for our economic future.
It's a cliche that too little American talent goes into science, and that too many people go into banking, and that our education system is said to be failing because of those effects. To some substantial effects it must be true. I found myself on a business trip to Europe and lucky for me I was sitting in business class. Seated not far from me in business class was a young woman who had graduated from Harvard 14 months before and who was working for a major financial institution and she was traveling to Europe and when people travel for that major financial institution they travel in business class. I like to walk when I'm on a plane, so I wandered. I walked back to coach and on that airplane in coach was a distinguished physicist who I had known when I was president of Harvard who I think probably is close to even money to win a Nobel Prize one day. He was going to a conference like professors of physics do and he was going like professors of physics like him go, which is in coach. And I didn't say anything to either of them, but I thought to myself there was something odd about the reward structure of our society.
source: Manufacturing and Technology News - 12/03/08
Don't look to President-elect Barack Obama's chief economic advisor to direct any of the massive economic stimulus package toward funding for science and technology. When asked by Manufacturing & Technology News at a recent event at the National Academy of Sciences if there was a need for some of the stimulus to support R&D, and in particular the thousands of scientific grant applications that are going unfunded, Lawrence Summers, incoming director of Obama's National Economic Council, responded: "You're not going to much like my answer but I guess it won't be the first time I gave an answer that wasn't 100 percent diplomatic....In the context of a short-run macroeconomic stimulus, that is to say, programs of stimulus that are explicitly temporary, it does not strike me that running up the research budget and then running down the research budget is a terribly rational way to run a country."
Summers was quick to note that he believes there needs to be an increase in federal R&D funds for the sake of the long-term health of the U.S. economy. "There is an important role for more science....but while more may always be better, a lot of ramping up and ramping down comes with very substantial inefficiency," he said.
Obama's stimulus package would increase the short-term federal budget deficit, but the intention is to build the economy in such a way as to provide long-term growth in federal revenue, said Summers. There is a "certain logic" to providing tax cuts for two years, and for accelerating investments in infrastructure that have been cancelled due to state budget shortfalls. There should be temporary federal investments in renewable energy, in information technology in the health care sector to lower costs, in universal broadband and pervasive wi-fi. "I don't think turning a science program on and then turning it off has an enormous logic," he said. "So that is the sense in which science as a short-term stimulus doesn't seem quite right to me."
Over the long term, robust investments in science and technology will be perhaps the only driver of future economic growth, and there needs to be "much more public support," said Summers. "Basic science is basically very, very important....On the one hand, only government can provide the support at the most basic level and on the other hand, the track record of governments in picking winners and losers -- in deciding what are the most fruitful industries -- is not hugely encouraging over time and in the quality of its judgment. So I would be tilting a bit more towards basic research in part in the conviction that there are lots of examples: the pure mathematics of factoring algorithms is just one example of where what seemed like the most abstract and irrelevant thing actually turned out to be the source of very substantial national security impact and a very substantial commercial benefit."
Here are excepts from Summer's after-dinner talk hosted in October by the National Academies' Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy:
[..]
What is the transformative activity that is going to be like the interstate highway system, the building of suburbs, that's like electronics or the Internet? What is the next thing going to be? Having the next thing, making sure it drives the economy has to be of profound importance.
Many say it's renewable energy, but if you think about it, renewable energy is more defensive than offensive. It will prevent the price of oil from spiking to a ludicrous extent. It will have very substantial environmental benefits, but at the end of the day renewable energy ends when you're plugging something in the wall and you're getting electricity like you used to. It doesn't end in a totally new capacity to do new things that were previously un-contemplated, like my cell phone does or the Internet.
Biotech? Maybe. But how much of GNP is going to be touched? Pharmaceuticals, healthcare, agriculture, certain part of materials science. But is the pervasiveness quite there? Next wave information technology? Maybe. But what are the technologies that the military has today that civilians will have 10 years from now that will be transformative? How many of them are there? What will their impact be? I don't know the answer to the question. But I do know that the underlying rate of growth that history suggests the dissemination of pervasive technologies is a profound issue for our economic future.
It's a cliche that too little American talent goes into science, and that too many people go into banking, and that our education system is said to be failing because of those effects. To some substantial effects it must be true. I found myself on a business trip to Europe and lucky for me I was sitting in business class. Seated not far from me in business class was a young woman who had graduated from Harvard 14 months before and who was working for a major financial institution and she was traveling to Europe and when people travel for that major financial institution they travel in business class. I like to walk when I'm on a plane, so I wandered. I walked back to coach and on that airplane in coach was a distinguished physicist who I had known when I was president of Harvard who I think probably is close to even money to win a Nobel Prize one day. He was going to a conference like professors of physics do and he was going like professors of physics like him go, which is in coach. And I didn't say anything to either of them, but I thought to myself there was something odd about the reward structure of our society.