While i agree that shooting down any research with "think about poverty" is a bad argument, I think there are still much more important ways to spend money than this: anti-aging drugs developed by sens.org, gene drive to kill mosquitos, any technologies to build colony on mars etc . This is why it is important to have many people deciding for themselves on what to spend their money. If there are enough people who are interested in finding aliens they can redirect their part of GDP, but there should be a way for others to not be forced to spend their tax money on it.