At some point physics entitlement has to end -- why not here? We can't just keep scaling up the size and cost of fundamental physics experiments. Eventually the cost becomes so large that platitudinous arguments for them don't work.

We absolutely can, and I reckon we will... this is like a fraction of a percent of science funding which is a fraction of a percent of GDP, we spend more on maintaining warheads we can't use

10% of the US military budget for one year could build a 100km collider, RHIC is 4km

What a nonsense argument. Spending like this has to be justified on its own merits, not because there is some other bad spending. The argument you are trying to make would justify spending on almost anything.

The point is that there's so much bad spending that by comparison this is practically nothing to shake a stick at, and it produces actual science.

Repeating a bad argument doesn't transmute it into a good argument. I already explained why your argument is invalid. Please reconsider your dogmatic and irrational support for this kind of spending.

No, you just asserted that you think existing arguments are invalid, then accused a person who disregarded your assertion of being "dogmatic".

It's not a question of "can", it's a question of "should". No one knows what discoveries can happen and what the spillover from them could be in the future. In essence, it's a bet, a moonshot.

How can you look at current and recent US science and call it 'entitlement'? Have there been larger cuts anywhere in modern history?

If you think you are entitled to any amount larger than zero, you are showing entitlement.

It's not an entitlement if you're paying into the tax base.

I'm somehow entitled to others receiving corporate bailouts, entitled to massive military waste spending, and entitled to seeing the "victims" of Havana Syndrome receiving free healthcare for life.

Yet I am not entitled to this money going towards research for the greater good of humanity?

Nit: saying “this country” without context on where the parent poster is from or where you are from is kinda useless.

From context, you probably mean USA. And I’d agree, however the US was always more technology minded than scientifically minded, and the parent poster lines up with that centuries old ideology. So I don’t think this is per se a new thing.

Why past tense? BNL will host the EIC, and SBU is going full steam.

FYI the lab isn't shutting down. Glad you appreciate it's achievements though!

You were not nearly harsh enough.