And a significant amount of that progress was funded by the government, relied on discoveries funded by government, or were made by people who lived or were educated because of government funding.
Which part of research funding requires it to be done at the federal level rather than the states?
If anything we're under-funding it now for precisely that reason. The federal government extracts money from every state's tax base and then spends it on the F-35. Whereas the states have to compete with each other for talent, so California given their proportion of the same money would want to give it to UCLA or Berkeley to attract the sort of high-earning taxpayers who want to send their kids to those schools or graduate from them and stay in the state, or cause local research grant recipients to put down roots and found successful companies. And so would all the others.
