How would you get any breakthrough in basic sciences without essentially blindly spending on research, hoping something will come out of it in 50 years or so? That some other people in some other country will base their commercial applications on? Not everything is profitable or useful in time for the next quarter. Basic research is a tide that lifts all boats.

Also, my vacuuming robot is pretty good, I haven't had to manually vacuum in several month and there is virtually no dust. I'd rather have that now than wait for robot researchers to get bored fishing and build something incredibly better.