To Endow Theory

Two questions:

• how much does it take to make theory conferences free?, and
  
• how do we get there?
  

Let me focus only on the first question. It will be great to support or subsidize

• travel, meals, and stay for all academic participants -- students, postdocs, faculty -- and
  
• conference operational cost including auditoriums, A/V, publication, website and publicity, etc.

for major conferences, say 3 per year: 300 attendees @ $1000 each, and additional expenses of $100k, $400k per conference and $1.2M per year? At the standard calculation that $x investment will give 3% per year in spending money after preserving capital adjusted for inflation, x=40M. Like all numbers, these can be tweaked of course (fewer/more conf, persons or level of support, adjusting for inflation per year in required budget, etc), which only leaves the second question open.