Originally Posted by JonLaw
As I said earlier, we are now in the twilight years of STEM.

The Golden Age of STEM is gone.

Not coming back.

In the US, with the forces that are currently aligned against it, I'd say you're mostly right. There are a handful of companies that still do research (Google), but to do STEM on a large scale, you need massive amounts of investment without any immediate prospect of a payoff, because you never really know what the outcome of research will be. And that massive amount of investment can't happen without at least one of two things:

1) Corporate commitment to bearing the expense: The current corporate culture rewards short-term gains, and cutting/eliminating research is low-hanging fruit.

2) Public commitment to bearing the expense: The current political machine is incapable of accomplishing anything, much less paying for it.

That's not to say that one of those things may not change in the future, so I won't say it's not coming back. The Golden Age is alive in China, among others, and given significant changes in the geopolitical situation for the US (read: danger), it could come back again pretty quickly.