So You Want Green Energy, New Medicines and Flying Cars? You Need the Federal Government

Federal agencies and the nation's universities perform 70 percent of all basic R&D in the United States. Additionally, corporate spending on basic and applied research as a share of total corporate R&D actually fell by 3.6 percent from 1991 to 2008. What money the private sector is investing actually goes to the development of ideas they get from the knowledge mountain. Moreover, every dollar of federal investment induces the private sector to invest an additional 27 cents on R&D.

So wake up and stop complaining about innovation stagnation and focus on a real solution: dramatically increasing federal support for scientific and engineering research.