Sorry, I mean to "compete".

Smart and motivated people is in limited supply, so nations would complete for them. No graduate students, or postdocs, have ever got rich from their stipends while perform research in the US. Otherwise more American youth would want to work in university laboratories instead of the Wall Street. China is doing everything to bring their best talents home, because they also have invested a lot of resources on them. It still a sound investment for the US to attract the best talents from anywhere in the world to be educated and perform research here. If just the top 10% of these people decide to stay in this country, then everyone benefits from that. Furthermore, it is easier to find and recruit the best talents and for them want to stay, if they are educated here...most be the koolaid you find in the cafeteria.

Dear Funding Agency: JPL has a great track record for "less money for greater success"! In addition, the initial $520M for Mars Lander projects has kept many physcists and engineers happily employed. Instead of giving $$ to further enrich Wall Street bankers, business exec, hedgefund traders, etc., this project will employ the brightest minds in this great country to achieve no other countries can in the next N years(and pile up more bull-s*&t here until the BS meter breaks).

Dear ___funding agency____, Is there surface water on Mars? We need to send another mission to Mars. It should cost less than the amount of money GM asked for bailout during this funding period to study this question, and 2 five-year funding periods to really find out. Please send money. JPL/NASA

If it is a theory, then we can apply this idea called "scientific method" and develop a testable hypothesis, and then... Wait, the flat earth idea has been shown to be false: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth and Earth is an oblate spheroid. "Round" could be interpreted as like a circle and two-dimensional, just those flat-earth people want you to think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth These flat earth "alchemists" are just like those who claim that human activities could never affect the climate http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics, there are endless oil supplies on earth for human consumption, http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/run_out_of_oil.htm, HIV does not cause AIDS http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aids/not/abstract.htm, and the only way to study whales is to kill them and sell the meat in the supermarket http://www.icrwhale.org/QandAjapanresearch.htm. Aaahhh these fucking assholes.