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Actual title: "If the government wants science to have an economic impact it has to put its money where its mouth is"
I feel like concepts like "this has to a have an economic impact" really limits what discoveries can be made and adds some blinders ...
I'm not opposed to some concept of that, but what feeds science is OTHER science, often not even directly obvious how the impact plays out.
I'm thinking of the old Connections TV show where huge advances are lead by tons of experiments and failures. You don't get the big advancement without the other failures / attempts and more general science.
Similar to the article, you have to fund ALL that science, if you're going to get some applicable output. Not just "do the last step first". We didn't go to the moon JSUT because we decided sometime in the mid 20th century to do so...
The situation around science funding in New Zealand is wrapped up in what an acquaintance calls the current government's extractive mindset: that everything (and I do mean everything) must generate revenue and, preferably, a profit to be worthwhile,
If NZ's government wants science to have economic impact, then there needs to be a good incentive to build profitable businesses.
Investing time and effort and giving up wages makes founding a losing game.
9 out of 10 businesses go under, so need much greater than 10x return to make risk worthwhile. VCs aim for 30x (a more realistic figure to break even on total risk).
Let's say your pretax income is $75k, and your post-tax income is $60k and you normally save $20k per year. Let's say you "invest" two years into starting a business. If you halve your living expenses from $40k to $20k per year, and you spend $30k on the business. You've spent $20k*2 + $30k and you've forgone $20k*2 savings. You're $110k down if the business fails: that is five 1/2 years of savings lost. Or you need to work five years longer - ouch.
If you have a moderate success, earning say $250k per annum for 10 years, you pay $77k in tax per year. You earn $1.7 million. You are barely breaking even risk adjusted (10x$110k) and inflation makes calculation far worse. The numbers don't stack up in New Zealand to start a business. You would have saved $20k*10 as an employee, so you you might be better off just working (depending on personal costs of starting business - often extrodinarily high health/family costs). $1M retirement savings might not be enough to pay you $60k a year so you still haven't won even at $250k per annum.
The government needs to change taxation so that starting a business makes financial sense. For example lower taxes on new export income. Export income helps every New Zealander. Every business dollar earned from overseas and spent within NZ (wages, products, services) should be strongly incentivised by the tax system.
I was in the Christchurch incubator which had the goal of commercialisation of the IP at Canterbury University. A government funded money pit full of clueless academics. I love science, and believe in University research. But economics matter.
Government schemes always lack the skills to be effective investors. The money mostly goes to grifters. I would love to see some reports on return on investment for say Callaghan.