Countries over the whole world pay a share to CERN. CERN is not only searching for this last missing boson (HIGGS boson), they also search for new ways of making energy, and I'm sure they do lots more. This 6 billion dollars divided over a large amount of countries over the world isn't that much, definately not if you imagine that projects in CERN may bring solutions to the big problems we will inevitably face in the future.

And I know you mostly said it as a joke, I just wanted to make a point here for no reason :P.