I attended a special seminar today about federal funding for physics, given by the head of government relations for the American Physical Society. The audience was small but vocal, which made for a really interesting discussion. I didn't realize that the largest government funder of physical sciences R&D by far is the Department of Energy, although it makes sense. The United States spends about 2.5 billion dollars a year on physics research, which may sound large, but that's only 0.075% (yes, that's not a typo) of our GDP. In fact, funding for all the sciences has been flat, except for the life sciences, which has seen a significant increase over the past few years.

The speaker talked about how quickly Asian countries are catching up to us, each year increasing their physics budget by a huge amount. In fact, it's gotten to the point where the United States imports more high-technology products than we export, which wasn't true in the 1990s. Foreign technological progress is beginning to overtake American progress. Many foreign countries award more physics doctorates than we do, and about half of the physics doctorates awarded in the U.S. are to foreign citizens.

The speaker explained how scientists and the APS lobby the government to increase funding. Foreign technological growth is a good thing, but if the U.S. wants to remain a world leader in science and technology, we need to invest. He said that the most compelling argument to politicians for an increase in physical sciences funding is that it will create new jobs and bring about economic growth.