Maybe the ~$29 billion [1] spent by the US on fusion total since 1953 to date seems like a lot from a personal perspective, but consider the modern cost of $3.5 billion for building 1 Giga Watt of generation capacity [2] for a coal power plant, the claim that fusion is unreasonably expensive and impracticable doesn't hold water. Compare fusion research to other broad spectrum research projects that benefit broad swaths of mankind, you see a remarkably different attitude and perception. This one cancer research foundation in the UK raised 460 million pounds in 2012/13 [3], more than twice the total international spending on ITER in 2014 [4]. There is clearly a double standard when it comes to comparing the results of fusion R&D with other long term efforts that still fail to offer satisfactory solutions after decades of concerted effort.
[1] http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/reframe/wasteful/ [2] http://schlissel-technical.com/docs/reports_35.pdf [3] http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/prod_consump/groups/cr_commo... [4] (page 20) https://www.iter.org/doc/all/content/com/Lists/depts/Attachm...