It's important to understand the difference between handouts and investments with an expected ROI.

It's unfortunate that 0th order thinking jumps to this framing, it's one reason I always laugh when people talk about SpaceX taking 'government handouts' without these folks realizing the 100x ROI the government got out of their investment. All investments are 'hand outs' but not all 'hand outs' are investments.

Clear thinking at a large enough scale will prevent a populace from self destructing due to stupidity about this topic.