We had to pay for this study... to actually measure what happens.

[T]o really test the Theory, we will need the upgrade and either the SSC—the Texas Supercollider—or the European LHC. ...[P]erhaps it would be worth several billion dollars to establish that God exists, and that one day we will all be resurrected to live forever with Him/Her.

I totally agree that there is an implementation cost needed to actuate a program. And yes, we need to monitor the implementation of our programs and projects to ensure accountability and judicious use of public funds, but it should not be that expensive. Our government already has an existing machinery and mechanism to precisely do that. We have the Commission on Audit, why do we need this redundancy of functions?

The objective is to carry out retrospective evaluations to ascertain how the money was spent.

My own judgement is that modest efforts to assess levels of benefits and costs are justified, although I do not believe that government agencies ought to sponsor efforts to put dollar prices on non-market things. I also do not believe that the cry for more cost-benefit analysis in regulation is, on the whole, justified. If regulatory officials were so insensitive about regulatory costs that they did not provide acceptable raw material for deliberative judgments (even if not of a strictly cost-benefit nature), my conclusion might be different. But a good deal of research into costs and benefits already occurs-actually, far more in the U.S. regulatory process than in that of any other industrial society. The danger now would seem to come more from the other side.

The new program I propose is within our means. Its cost of 970 million dollars is 1 percent of our national budget--and every dollar I am requesting for this program is already included in the budget I sent to Congress in January. But we cannot measure its importance by its cost. For it charts an entirely new course of hope for our people. We are fully aware that this program will not eliminate all the poverty in America in a few months or a few years. Poverty is deeply rooted and its causes are many. But this program will show the way to new opportunities for millions of our fellow citizens. It will provide a lever with which we can begin to open the door to our prosperity for those who have been kept outside. It will also give us the chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come. As conditions change, and as experience illuminates our difficulties, we will be prepared to modify our strategy. And this program is much more than a beginning. Rather it is a commitment. It is a total commitment by this President, and this Congress, and this nation, to pursue victory over the most ancient of mankind's enemies.

We are spending a million million dollars every year, worldwide, on armaments. A million million dollars. Think of what you could do with a million million dollars. A visitor from somewhere else - the legendary intelligent extraterrestrial - dipping down to the Earth and inquiring what we are about and finding such prodigies of human inventiveness and such enormous fractions of our wealth devoted not just to the means of war but to the means of massive global destruction - such a being would surely deduce that our prospects are not very good and perhaps go on to some other, more promising world.

We must not stop this progress because we are unwilling to commit enough money to get the job done. It is imperative that the public--and more importantly our elected representatives understand that research today is not speculative. It is not a waste of money. It is the only way to relieve suffering while helping to save the American economy at the same time. Making this a reality demands an investment of real dollars--funds that just don't fit within the constraints of the Budget Agreement passed by Congress this week, which proposes to reduce overall health spending by $100 million next year and by more than $2 billion over the next 5 years.

Anyone got a few million they wanna invest?

If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.

This money ($1m) my partners and I spent, first of all, on buying PCR-testing equipment and protective gear for medical personnel.

With whatever reasonable amount of money we can get, we will achieve a lot once we use it judiciously.”

If military spending were used for other purposes, a fund could be set up to help millions of people who are dying for peace.

It may also be pertinent to ask whether a greater effort in the less expensive basic stages of research may not lead to reductions of effort in the far costlier stages of development and prototype construction.