NSF-funded research helped originate the conservative economic ideas now used to justify cutting NSF.

Evidence

It is ironic and sad that whoever came up with these cuts does not even recognize that most of the recent “conservative” ideas in economics—the importance of “rational expectations” and the impotency of conventional macroeconomic policy, the disincentive effects of various income-support programs, the magnitude of the regulatory burden, and the arguments for deregulation—all originated in, or were provided with quantitative backing by NSF supported studies. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 805

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the thesis of Mirowski’s book that the neoliberal thought collective funded and produced the ‘commonsense’ economics that later legitimized austerity. — connects to: Conservative foundations funded unorthodox ideas decades before the think tank boom — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 322; Neoliberal policy experiments are preconditions that make economic research findings possible — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1955
• SEED: Angle: state-funded research as the unwitting architect of policies that later dismantle state funding for research.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal policy experiments are preconditions that make economic research findings possible #responds-to (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1955