A hundred billion dollars is a lot of money. The annual budget of NIH is ~$30B and it funds a high fraction of the most advanced biological research worldwide. The DOE also has a budget $30B and funds (along with this project) many other projects including alternative energies, advanced computing and the Human Genome Project. NSF is (only!) another $7B, leaving around $33B addition funds for a diverse research portfolio.
This kind of expenditure is required to maintain US at or near the highest level of technology research in the world (other countries can compete with us in many ways, such as lower labor costs). There are things that can only be physically done in a single location in the US and nowhere else in the world- and it will be that way until on of the postdocs goes back to Europe or Asia and replicates the result in their lab.
So yes, $100B is a lot of money- and that's the kind of investment that often ends up benefiting the US (and other) economy. The fusion research-- to the extent that what NIF is doing is translatable to other domains-- doesn't really meet this sniff test.
No single corporation controls that much capital; even the largest are just half-way there. Very few organizations can organize and control that amount of money.
I agree that compared to the total circulation of virtual money, $1T is small compared to the total.
A hundred billion dollars is a lot of money. The annual budget of NIH is ~$30B and it funds a high fraction of the most advanced biological research worldwide. The DOE also has a budget $30B and funds (along with this project) many other projects including alternative energies, advanced computing and the Human Genome Project. NSF is (only!) another $7B, leaving around $33B addition funds for a diverse research portfolio.
This kind of expenditure is required to maintain US at or near the highest level of technology research in the world (other countries can compete with us in many ways, such as lower labor costs). There are things that can only be physically done in a single location in the US and nowhere else in the world- and it will be that way until on of the postdocs goes back to Europe or Asia and replicates the result in their lab.
So yes, $100B is a lot of money- and that's the kind of investment that often ends up benefiting the US (and other) economy. The fusion research-- to the extent that what NIF is doing is translatable to other domains-- doesn't really meet this sniff test.