Eating the Seedcorn - 23 May 95

The recent movements in Congress to cut the US science budget is both short sighted and dangerous. It is shortsighted because this is the source of much of the nation's economic strength and also it's standard of living and therein lies its danger. Such a reckless course will surely hasten this countries decline to the status of a third world nation.

Congress is currently demonstrating the same shortsightedness and selfishness shown by the average wall street investor which is indeed a misnomer, since there is really no investment in anything. These people would all be better off playing the wheel at their local gambling establishment.

With this kind of attitude, we can not expect the nations corporations to take up the slack. There will be little incentive for students to persue advanced studies, and we can look forward to a future crisis as we suffer from a lack of new technologies or the people to develop or sustain them.

I fear that, in perhaps a decade, but possibly as little as 5 years hence, (since technology is proceeding so rapidly) we will look back and find that irreparable damage has been done to our technological infrastructure.