Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the absurdity of making minor cuts in funding to resolve larger financial issues.
Neil Degrasse Tyson uses an analogy comparing the insignificant reduction of funding for PBS to deleting small text files on a large hard drive to create space. This highlights how trivial actions may not substantially impact larger budgetary problems, suggesting that more meaningful solutions are necessary for effective financial management.
In practice
Using this quote in a debate about government spending can illustrate the inefficacy of trivial budget cuts.
The problem is that many people operate on the assumption that NASA should go to Congress every year with hat in hand and justify it every year. Well, I see it as the greatest economic driver that there ever was. Economic drivers don't need justification.
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It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat sh** and die.
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The cure for crime is not the electric chair, but the high chair.
When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: βYes, stand a little less between me and the sun.β It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.
To understand the power of the priesthood, we must know its limitations.
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