Maybe not for you, but voters arent giving taxpayer money to mathematicians for any reason other than hopefully leveraging the understanding mathematicians create to materially advance society. The people who are just interested in understanding can do it as a hobby
"How and whether specific mathematics might lead to improving the world (whatever that means) is usually impossible to tease out, but mathematics collectively is extremely important."
It can still be a good long term investment for society even if individual researchers are primarily motivated more by understanding than application. Arguably it’s the best approach we have because reliably predicting which ideas will be fruitful is super hard
Hmm, howcome voters give taxpayer money e.g. to subsidize pro sports facilities? And why do we fund the humanities?
Voters find sports entertaining and don’t want local teams to leave. Humanities are mostly funded for the same reason math is imo, voters hope humanity research will be able to improve society. I think you can make a research as entertainment argument, but it’s tough for math. Most voters can’t even wrap their head around the problem math research is asking let alone the answer.