U.S. R & D Spending Continues to Climb (Somebody Should Tell Congress)

Scott LincicomeAs I  noted on Wednesday, the Senate is now considering “The United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021” (formerly known as the “Endless Frontier Act”), which is primarily* intended to boost federal funding for research and development in the United States by tens of billions of dollars. If you were to listen to the bill’s advocates, you’d think that the United States was suffering from a  dramatic decline in R&D spending over the last several decades, and that other countries — particularly China — had raced ahead. New data from the U.S. andNational Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) and theOECD, however, paint a  different picture.First, the NCSES ’ latest report on R&D expenditures shows that total U.S. spending reached an all ‐​time high in 2019, both in total, inflation‐​adjusted dollars ($584.4 billion) and as a share of GDP (3.06%):That same dataset shows that all forms of R&D — basic, applied, and experimental development — also hit all‐​time highs in 2019:The OECD, meanwhile, shows that the United States still leads the world in gross R&D expenditures and is among the top 10  in R&D intensity (GDP share), still well above China in both categories:Of course, total dollar amounts alone can ’t tell us everything we need to know about a nation’s innovative capacity. However, the data above shouldat least warrant skepticism about the need for tens of billions of tax...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs