America Is Running on Fumes

It's an elaborate piece, but largely an unsubstantiated opinion piece.

Sure, some things are obvious: largest amount of cash goes on trivial, incremental improvements. Sure, popular movies are largely lacking substance.

But none of that makes the larger premise true: we don't need to be investing the most money in risky, experimental research and development. Throughout the history, that's also been the case (eg investment in military has always been huge, and only a fraction was for RnD).

It can similarly be used as a counter argument: we are getting more deeply invested during our daily work, and we need more frivolous entertainment to relax us. I don't think this is true either, but noted circumstances are not in a contradiction with this either.

Alan Kay has a very good explanation for why this is the case.