Big Think

Transcript:Well there’s almost nothing that we’re not doing at some level. We could be spending more money on it, but that means we have to be spending less money on something. So it’s really where we move the money from and to. I’m not going to be very profound here. Anybody could say we should be spending less money on wars, especially since we are no longer really seriously threatened. Terrorism is not a public health threat relative to cancer, and heart disease, and malaria and so forth. We need to move that money into things that are health threats and threats to educating the population. If the population were educated it would solve a lot of problems, both scientific and political. So that’s a huge reprioritization that we have historically not been very good at doing. Certainly there are fewer American deaths with each war that we’ve had for the last few wars, but that really isn’t solving the problem of money being spent. And money is life in a certain sense. That money is not being spent on healthcare, education and scientific progress.