SENATE BILL: The STAR Act (Law'd) (user search)

Atlasia has seen a marked drop in basic science research spending in recent years, and many of our vaunted private institutions that conducted such research such as Bell Labs, Sarnoff Corporation, or XEROX PARC, have either dropped out of basic research for projects that are lucrative in the short term or folded entirely. Indeed, in these days of fierce competition and dwindling profit margins it makes little sense to invest in research in the fundamentals or theory with little connection to daily operations. As was written in Bloomberg BusinessWeek:

With the increasing focus on shareholder value that began in the 1990s as global competition heated up, Fortune 500 companies could no longer justify open-ended research that might not directly impact their bottom line. Today, corporate research is almost exclusively engineering R&D, tending more toward applied research with a 3- to 5-year time horizon (or shorter).

This was a luxury the monopolies or conglomerates of yesteryear had, but today’s corporations do not. But it is not a luxury, but indeed a necessity.

The many inventions of today- the tablet computer, the smartphone, the LCD television- were made possible by the innovations of decades prior- the transistor, the graphical user interface, and so forth, and those were backed up by simple scientific discoveries from even further beyond. This is something that Governor Nix noted in the past. But a link has been broken in that chain of discovery- the same science. We are not engaging in basic science research, and thus cannot expect further innovation if we do not invest in the foundations of that innovation- such is common sense.

We today have seen manufacturing leave our shores, and whilst I would hope our government may one day take pains to see its return that is not the issue at hand today. We have placed our hopes for the time being in a “service economy”, but that, in the vein of thought of a Missourian expatriate I am loathe to find myself agreeing with, has given a few of us jobs in the finance sector whilst this “service economy” has meant, for the most of us, a job servicing customers at a fast food restaurant or clerking a checkout counter at a supermarket. Our rate of personal debt has soared, whilst growth in the economy is funneled to a select few. This is not their doing; it is instead that of the general business climate.

But we have a chance to rectify this. By investing in basic research we lay the seeds for another burst of innovation and the invention of the next generation, the chance to funnel their benefits into millions of well-paying jobs. But we need this soon, and indeed we need this now. Thus it is imperative that we conduct these efforts on a wide scale to achieve a “critical mass” of basic science research to accelerate innovation and bring their benefits to market sooner rather than later. That is also why we need to involve, and indeed make central, the private sector. The government may be good at conducting basic research, but it does so in a vacuum, where its only use is for paper writing and further experimentation. The private sector can bring these goods to market; make the experimental into the practical.

But this is a cycle, and it is only if we keep it rotating we can bring gain fruit from it indefinitely. With tax credits, however, I think we reduce the expense dramatically and the governmental risk involved. Many other proposals made by think-tanks along these lines involved credits as opposed to subsidies and I think those work better. Otherwise I see this bill as being good federally.

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