You raised the issue of economic demand for academic philosophers, so I addressed the problem in economic terms.

I disagree about the other humanities. History and the arts offer a wider array of different-enough subjects to employ armies of scholars. (STEM pays better, but you singled out philosophy.) Philosophy, on the other hand, seems to funnel down to what do we know and how do we know it. You may well be right about ideas bubbling up. But just how many geniuses does it take to make the bubbles?

The relative importance of a project does not tell us how many people can earn their livings working on it. The marginal return to philosophical understanding from the addition of one more competent philosopher is arguably less than the marginal return to scientific understanding from the addition of one more competent scientist. I'm saying only that the marketplace has made that judgement because of the nature of philosophical inquiry, and not, as you suggest, because the results are depressing.

Philosophers do have problems to solve and products to sell. What does it mean to say that there are no jobs in philosophy if not that there is little demand for philosophers' product. I am not comparing philosophy TO science; I am comparing it WITH science as a generator of economically valuable goods.

Please don't think that I am denigrating philosophy. I read this article, right? I majored in history and minored in philosophy, but I earned my money as a lawyer. Willie Sutton did not rob banks because philosophy was unimportant.