I'm currently a postdoctoral researcher, so I'm directly funded out of money from my boss, which comes from the US Government (the Department of Energy). Money is most definitely a problem for academic research at the moment in almost any subject (the humanities have had almost non-existent funding for years in the UK) and is one of the reasons I moved countries after my PhD. I don't like arguing for science funding on purely economic grounds (I think it says something very sad about society that one often has to make such arguments to politicians), but whilst there is some debate about quite how good funding science is for the economy as a whole (see, for example, this Nature piece and articles therein), there is a definite consensus that it is good. Probably I'm biased (as a scientist), but I can't help but think scientific inquisitiveness is as much a defining feature of humanity as its pursuit of the arts, exploration, poetry, theatre, literature, etc. Eh, hopefully I don't sound too pretentious!