One metric you could use is how often publications are mentioned by patents, and how often those patents lead to economic value. By this metric, it is valuable.

The number of PhDs we have is currently too many given the amount of money we have for project grants. But there is no evidence that the money we allocate to research is too large. If anything, you could argue the opposite.

I would be delighted if the private market funded basic research - the seed ideas that lead to patents.