It's essentially the willingness of a society to fund what looks like and could actually be a complete waste of time and money.
In the US there's plenty of money to throw on seemingly frivolous pursuits, because stagnant money is generally considered wasted money. It's considered better to have that money "working for you" invested in something, anything. You could lose out, you could also win big, at least you tried. Can't have omelets without cracking eggs, as the saying goes.
Another Europe-like example is Japan: A rich society with lots of money, but society doesn't want to waste it. So most of the money is stagnant, stored in deposit accounts or in a bedroom drawer (literally, see: Tansu Yokin[1]) instead of being invested in something consequently leading to a stagnant economy.
Money in a drawer doesn't really detract from any national investment. It's just paper.
It's the allocation of capital that matters. Land, machinery, and so on.
The extent of this is that if money sits in drawers not being spent, it represents diminished demand, which suppresses prices; the government can then print a corresponding amount of money to allocate capital towards other purposes. Leaving money in the drawer means delaying until another day your vote for how national resources should be allocated.
In the US there's plenty of money to throw on seemingly frivolous pursuits, because stagnant money is generally considered wasted money. It's considered better to have that money "working for you" invested in something, anything. You could lose out, you could also win big, at least you tried. Can't have omelets without cracking eggs, as the saying goes.
Another Europe-like example is Japan: A rich society with lots of money, but society doesn't want to waste it. So most of the money is stagnant, stored in deposit accounts or in a bedroom drawer (literally, see: Tansu Yokin[1]) instead of being invested in something consequently leading to a stagnant economy.
[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/a-nations-character-rev...