Fact Check Me: Why We Spend Money on “Weird Science”
I’m a working-class guy. Always have been.
I hang around working-class people — truck drivers, contractors, warehouse guys, cooks… the real backbone of every city.
And one thing I hear all the time is:
“Why the hell are we spending taxpayer money on this research crap?”
And look — I get it.
When you’re crawling out of bed at 5 a.m., joints screaming, back tight, dragging yourself into another 10–12 hour day just to come home, eat something, shower, sleep, and do it all over again… yeah, hearing that the government cut a cheque so some guy can grow yeast in a basement feels like a slap in the face.
Space exploration?
Particle physics?
Deep-sea probes?
Why not just fix the damn roads?
But here’s the truth nobody tells working people:
Research is the *only* thing your tax dollars buy that actually builds a richer future.
Not tomorrow — but ten, twenty, thirty years from now.
The problem is psychological, not financial.
Working-class people live in a world where every dollar has to prove itself immediately.
If you start your own business and it fails?
You’re screwed. No cushion. No bailout. No family trust.
So of course it feels insane to pour money into something with no guaranteed return.
Of course “exploring the unknown” sounds irresponsible.
Because for you?
Risk equals danger.
But for a society?
Risk equals progress.
That “guy growing yeast in his basement”?
He might be the reason insulin exists.
Or antibiotics.
Or kombucha — and hey, two out of three ain’t bad.
That space budget everyone complains about?
It gave us GPS, weather satellites, water filtration, prosthetic limbs, scratch-resistant lenses, MRI technology, and half the communications tools we take for granted.
NASA literally figured out how to save premature babies because they needed tiny temperature-controlled sensors for astronauts.
Every major leap humanity has ever taken looked like a waste of money to the people paying for it at the time.
The printing press? Waste of money.
Electricity? Waste of money.
The internet? A toy for nerds.
The average working-class person sees the price.
They never get to see the payoff — not until decades later, when the world has already been changed by it.
And here’s the irony:
Working-class people benefit the most from publicly funded research — but feel the most betrayed by it.
Why?
Because they’ve never been invited into the conversation.
Nobody explains it to them. Politicians talk in circles. News media dumbs it down until it’s meaningless. And the rich don’t worry because they’ll benefit either way.
So yeah, I get the frustration.
I get the instinct to say:
“Fix what’s broken before you go chasing stars.”
But here’s the hard truth:
If we only fix what’s broken, we never build what’s possible.
Maintenance keeps a society alive.
Research moves it forward.
And if you ever want your kids to live in a world where life is easier than what you had… where they’re not breaking their backs just to get by… where 12-hour shifts aren’t the norm…
Then you want your tax dollars funding the weird stuff.
The uncertain stuff.
The “what if” stuff.
Because that’s where the future comes from.