1/ The proposed $300B 4-year investment in R&D is real important, though I wonder why it's not more aggressive. I also wonder if we can reimagine where R&D funding is deployed. https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1281326005609615360

2/ Federal R&D spend as % of GDP has declined a lot. A good bit has been replaced by corporations, but they're funding more development than basic research.

https://itif.org/publications/2019/08/12/federal-support-rd-continues-its-ignominious-slide

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45715.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiOrY3Us8LqAhXooXIEHfnnCvwQFjAAegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw0m34uC-vwTYMIRmCcTBx9O

3/ The @ITIFdc says we're going to need annual R&D investment more in the $100B range to get back to '80s level investments, not to mention the '60s. This doesn't all turn on dollars, fortunately. A mindset of pushing innovation is key too.

4/ That brings me to reimagining the deployment of R&D funding. @drlisadcook estimated that 79% of black folks were illiterate in 1870, around when the first black person got a PhD in the US. Yet, a couple decades after that, the number of patents by black folks peaked in 1899.

This comes from @drlisadcook's Violence and Economic growth paper. It's fascinating. You can find the link here: https://lisadcook.net/research/publications/

5/ Vannevar Bush got the ball rolling on the formalization of government R&D during WWII, subsequently linking research institutions, the government and corporations. I wonder the extent to which your lay person secures R&D funding.

https://time.com/collection/life-reinvented/5480480/america-innovation

6/ Could there be a fourth rung that includes folks outside those bounds?The development of our R&D structure was an innovation back then. There's nothing saying we can't reimagine it now and find ways to bring more people into the process of building the future.