Should Billionaires Be Taxed Out Of Existence? Let's Look At The Science

American billionaires pay virtually no taxes in relation to the amount of wealth they have accumulated. We usually read about it-- if ever-- in regard to the unconscionable and growing wealth back in our country. Income inequality is starting to come up, albeit just barely, as a topic of discussion among political elites. But this weekend, the NY Times pointed to another consequence: the privatization of scientific research. William Broad wrote that "American science, long a source of national power and pride, is increasingly becoming a private enterprise." President Obama may brag about the role of government in inventing the Internet, developing life-saving drugs and putting a man on the moon, but "[i]n Washington, budget cuts have left the nation’s research complex reeling. Labs are closing. Scientists are being laid off. Projects are being put on the shelf, especially in the risky, freewheeling realm of basic research. Yet from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, science philanthropy is hot, as many of the richest Americans seek to reinvent themselves as patrons of social progress through science research."

The result is a new calculus of influence and priorities that the scientific community views with a mix of gratitude and trepidation.

“For better or worse,” said Steven A. Edwards, a policy analyst at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.”

They have mounted a private war on disease, with new protocols that break down walls between academia and industry to turn basic discoveries into effective treatments. They have rekindled traditions of scientific exploration by financing hunts for dinosaur bones and giant sea creatures. They are even beginning to challenge Washington in the costly game of big science, with innovative ships, undersea craft and giant telescopes-- as well as the first private mission to deep space.

The new philanthropists represent the breadth of American business, people like Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor (and founder of the media company that bears his name), James Simons (hedge funds) and David H. Koch (oil and chemicals), among hundreds of wealthy donors. Especially prominent, though, are some of the boldest-face names of the tech world, among them Bill Gates (Microsoft), Eric E. Schmidt (Google) and Lawrence J. Ellison (Oracle).

This is philanthropy in the age of the new economy-- financed with its outsize riches, practiced according to its individualistic, entrepreneurial creed. The donors are impatient with the deliberate, and often politicized, pace of public science, they say, and willing to take risks that government cannot or simply will not consider.

Yet that personal setting of priorities is precisely what troubles some in the science establishment. Many of the patrons, they say, are ignoring basic research-- the kind that investigates the riddles of nature and has produced centuries of breakthroughs, even whole industries-- for a jumble of popular, feel-good fields like environmental studies and space exploration.

As the power of philanthropic science has grown, so has the pitch, and the edge, of the debate. Nature, a family of leading science journals, has published a number of wary editorials, one warning that while “we applaud and fully support the injection of more private money into science,” the financing could also “skew research” toward fields more trendy than central.

“Physics isn’t sexy,” William H. Press, a White House science adviser, said in an interview. “But everybody looks at the sky.”

Fundamentally at stake, the critics say, is the social contract that cultivates science for the common good. They worry that the philanthropic billions tend to enrich elite universities at the expense of poor ones, while undermining political support for federally sponsored research and its efforts to foster a greater diversity of opportunity-- geographic, economic, racial-- among the nation’s scientific investigators.

Historically, disease research has been particularly prone to unequal attention along racial and economic lines. A look at major initiatives suggests that the philanthropists’ war on disease risks widening that gap, as a number of the campaigns, driven by personal adversity, target illnesses that predominantly afflict white people-- like cystic fibrosis, melanoma and ovarian cancer.

…Medical institutions are even training their own scientists and doctors in the art of soliciting money from grateful-- and wealthy-- patients. And Nature ran a lengthy article giving tips on how to “sell science” and “woo philanthropists.” They included practicing an “elevator pitch” — a digest of research so compelling that it would seize a potential donor’s attention in the time between floors.

Practice in front of the mirror and “with anyone who will listen,” it advised. When the pitch is smooth enough, “aim high.”

In November 2012, the White House issued a thick and portentous update on the health of the nation’s research complex. Produced by Mr. Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, it warned of American declines, emphasized the rise of scientific rivals abroad and called for bold policy interventions.

“Without adequate support for such research,” the experts wrote in their cover letter, “the United States risks losing its leadership in invention and discovery.”

The financial outlook had fallen far and fast. Congress had long reached across party lines to support government research, for its economic and military rewards and because the distribution of billions of dollars plays well come election time. After rising steadily for decades, federal science financing hit a high point in 2009, in the early days of the Obama administration, as Congress, to stimulate the economy amid the global financial crisis, allocated about $40 billion for basic science.

That bipartisan consensus eroded with the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections and the budget battles that followed. Spending on basic research has fallen by roughly a quarter, to $30 billion last year, one of the sharpest declines ever.

The cutbacks translate into layoffs: A group of scientific societies recently surveyed 3,700 scientists and technical managers and reported that 55 percent knew of colleagues who had lost jobs or expected to lose them soon.

In an interview, the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis S. Collins, called 2013 one of his agency’s darkest years ever, with fewer grants awarded and with jobs and programs cut. In decades past, research financed by the institutes won more than 100 Nobel Prizes. The cutbacks, Dr. Collins said, were “profoundly discouraging.”

Science policy has always been shot through with politics. Little surprise, then, that political sensitivities have been stoked by the injection of philanthropic money into this traditionally public sphere.

The official reticence about private science may reflect, in part, a fear that conservatives will try to use it to further a small-government agenda. Indeed, some of the donors themselves worry that too much focus on private giving could diminish public support for federal science.

“It’s always been a major worry,” said Robert W. Conn, president of the Kavli Foundation, which has committed nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to science and is part of the private effort to increase financing for basic research. “Philanthropy is no substitute for government funding. You can’t say that loud enough.”

And even with an ideological and persistent Republican war on Science, depending on the whims of predatory, often spoiled, billionaires is not healthy for the nation or mankind. Thta's why progressive taxation was invented to begin with and that's another existential reason why we need to get back to it… and soon.