And research in the humanities is even cheaper and you see how well their doing.

I'm not sure I follow.

I was just making an offhand remark about how R&D gigs in industry for math/cs might be 'easier' to come by because their salary doesn't necessarily compete with lab costs.

The point is that all of this funding scarcity is artificial. its all agame to make you run like a hamster on a wheel. there is no capex needs for liberal arts, only modest opex. but no matter, none of those guys are "funded" either. they all are pitching projects for grants just like the STEM counterparts. Its basically a sociology experiment at this stage.