Earlier this year, my wife and I began watching the Apple TV+ program, For All Mankind.
The show explores what might have happened had the Soviet Union beaten the United States to the moon.
I don’t want to give too much away here, just in case some of you out there might want to watch it. (You should! It’s really good!) But I think it’s not too spoilery to say that one big change from reality is that the space race of the 1950s and ‘60s continues well into the 21st century.
In our world, spending on NASA peaked in 1966. That year, about 4.41% of the entire federal budget went to the space agency.
That is a very large percentage!
For context, all federal spending on education, training, employment and social services last year amounted to around 3% of the budget.
All that spending on the space program generated a few tangible side benefits (e.g., memory foam and Tang) But mostly, it increased human knowledge. I think we’d all agree that knowledge is important. But its importance is tricky to measure in purely monetary terms.
Economists have a name for things that are important but not really measurable in market terms. They’re called “public goods.” A public good is a thing that can be accessed by multiple people at once, without getting used up.
There are lots of examples of public goods—especially here in Pocahontas County. Over half of our county is public land, mostly in the form of parks and state and national forests. Parks are a quintessential public good—how can one possibly put a price on seeing the Falls at Hills Creek for the first time? The same goes for education. Going to school doesn’t use up schooling. Lots of people can go.
The United States has generally been very good about funding public goods.
In fact, there’s a good case to be made that the US won the race to the moon at least in part because NASA could draw from a huge pool of college graduates—a pool that existed thanks to the GI Bill, a federal program that paid for college for around eight million World War II veterans.
To put the point a different way, much of America’s standing as a superpower—one that has enjoyed a nearly unprecedented period of dominance militarily, economically and technologically—rests upon its commitment to actively support public goods.
Libraries are also public goods.
In West Virginia, a public library must have a “governing authority”—ours is the county commission—and must be at least partially funded by tax revenue.
In exchange for that tax revenue, we provide intellectual stimulation and cultural enrichment, enable lifelong learning and foster recreational reading. Are those things hard to measure in dollar terms? Yep. Are they valuable? Also yes.
Recently, we’ve seen an erosion in the provision of public goods. State funding of colleges and universities has cratered in the years since the Great Recession. Libraries across the country have weathered funding cuts in the wake of COVID. Parks are charging entrance fees.
This week, as we celebrate our country’s 248th birthday, we will—quite rightly—take pride in the United States’ continued economic, military and technological dominance.
I’ll be right there with you! (The cannon fire at the end of the 1812 Overture gives me chills Every. Single. Time.)
But I’ll also take a few moments to appreciate living in a country that has always prioritized public goods. I hope you’ll be there with me, too.
