Inspired by a forwarded e-mail about Obama’s speech to the NAS with this line in it
Imagine Key committing to invest 3% of GDP in R&D
Obama 27th April 2009 at the National Academy of Science
I am here today to set this goal: we will devote more than three percent of our GDP to research and development. We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the Space Race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science.”
As President Kennedy said when he addressed the National Academy of Sciences more than 45 years ago: ‘The challenge, in short, may be our salvation.’
Thank you all for your past, present, and future discoveries.
But no, what we have is Key irresponsibly making promises before an election that are just daft and which will be ‘responsibly’ dropped (because it was always too costly). Having ACT and its CCD’s (Climate Change Deniers) getting NIWA trying to muzzle our climate scientists so that they can kill the growing green industries while stifling discussion about the ‘review’ of the ETS. Cutting the rural R&D Fast Forward fund, so we can get out-competed in our main export sectors.
I suspect that Bill English in his Black Budget will cut our already pathetic 1.1% of GDP for science. After all it is too close to being half of the OECD average.
Imagine – all these things do not help to further fund tax-cuts for the affluent. They allow future generations to have a future. But of course having aspirations to a better future is less important than giving tax-cuts to affluent people who don’t really need them.
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