Phil Plait has an excellent post: Wealth of Science:
Then the author said something that literally startled me:
"Scientists, till recently at least, effectively donated the wealth they created."
He's absolutely right. Again, wealth is not the same as money. Scientists take a relatively small amount of money (compared to, say, the cost of an attack helicopter or the building of a bridge) and turn it into wealth. Knowledge. Understanding. A brief moment of awe in the public when they grasp a little bit more of the Universe.
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:-)
This excerpt from Marvin Minsky [being interviewed on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of AI] captures both the trend in "privitization of intellectual property" and the resulting dry spell in Minsky's particular branch of science: