To fund or not to fund - Are some science projects worth pursuing?

I have read through it, it is an interesting discussion. As someone who lives in a communist country, I can tell you that government spending is not always the great evil that many rabid capitalists want you to believe. If anything, its corporate gluttony that is much more abhorrent to me. The idea that anything is ok, as long as it is in the name of profits and increased stock prices is not a model of a great society in my opinion. So I am all for government sponsored projects, but I agree with Moose, if we are going to spend it, let's calculate the pluses, and make a better shopping list of priorities.How high is the search for invisible particles, created in the minds of scientists locked in a room and paid to create fantastic speculation? Pretty low on my list I would have to say. As cavediver has pointed out, there are very very few people on the planet who can even come close to understanding what is going on in the search for extra universes and strings created only by the evidence of imagination. I believe the further we go towards this type of far out theoretical pondering, we are by definition more likely to be wrong then right. How much should we spend on such short odds? We have to spend billions based on the fantasies of 5 people?And the pay-off if right? Unfortunately undefinable at this point, other than satisfying some curiosity.So again, if its my list, I am not saying it is not on there at all, but ok, renewable energy, better water management, removal of all plastics from the planet, an improved correctional system, a complete overhaul of our policing system with an emphasis on transparency and community co-operation as opposed to authoritarian muscle, more government funded medicine distribution...ok,ok particle physicists, sorry I will get to you, but I still have an awful lot of messes to clean up first.But yes, I would have voted for Hubble.

Well, when 60-100 million children starve to death every decade, when another 800 million people annually are malnourished, when 20,000 square miles of ocean are clogged with plastic contamination, when we are 30 years away from no more oil, when 10% of all college age blacks are in prison in America, when 50 million Americans are without health insurance, when we have no long term strategy for storing spent nuclear material, when 250 million people contract malaria every year...and a whole host of other issues, I say the money spent to satisfy people's curiosity is the bigger crime.