Because it's now very "sensitive" to ask soft-questions on MO, I prefer to take my care.

I would like ask "Why fund the research in pure mathematics?" on MO (in community-wiki mode),
with the tags: "soft-question", "career", "society".

Question: Is this question allowed on MO? Is it useful and clear ?

Content: The research in pure mathematics has (generally) no other choice that being funded by public organizations and universities, so that the money allocated to it (for new positions, new institutes, conferences...) depends on decisions of people with high responsibilities (generically politicians), who are (generally) unfamiliar with this research area.
Through this question, I would like to know and understand, on one hand, the main arguments of the politicians (or eq.) for deciding to allocate a particular proportion of their budget to the research in pure mathematics, and on the other hand, the main arguments of the mathematicians themselves.
I'm also interested in new (or not sufficiently developed publicly) arguments.
Remark: In order to be fair, the arguments in support or against (either some or more) fund the research in pure mathematics, are likewise requested (see this comment of Steven Landsburg).

I've posted this question on politics.se (as suggested by the answer of Bjørn):
Why fund the research in pure mathematics?

Remark: I hope there will have relevant and useful answers on politics.se (of course you can go answer, comment or improve the post there), else I will come back here for asking about a migration on MO.

Edit (15/07/14): See the new MO post How does one justify funding for mathematics research?
I note that this new post has 49 upvotes (0 downvote) and 31 favorites, so that this topic is very useful for the MO network. I note also that my post on politics.se was not relay before I did myself here, so that the users did not know its existence or just forget it. Conclusion: In what meta-MO was useful there?