Scientists and engineers expand the size of the economic pie; lawyers mostly work to divide it up differently. Whenever possible, work to be a person who creates things, instead of a person who tries to take stuff created by someone else. There is an infinite amount of work in science because the universe is big and we don’t really understand it and we probably never will. New answers to questions in science yields more questions.
Greenspun makes and attend to his discussion of what grad school in the sciences is like, especially this, his main point: “Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States.”
In other words, science is good for society but bad for the individual, from a purely economic standpoint.