[HN Gopher] How the U.S. became a science superpower
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How the U.S. became a science superpower
Author : groseje
Score : 204 points
Date : 2025-04-15 13:24 UTC (9 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (steveblank.com)
| b_emery wrote:
| If you read nothing else in this excellent post, read the
| conclusion:
|
| > A key component of this U.S. research ecosystem was the genius
| of the indirect cost reimbursement system. Not only did the U.S.
| fund researchers in universities by paying the cost of their
| salaries, the U.S. gave universities money for the researchers
| facilities and administration. This was the secret sauce that
| allowed U.S. universities to build world-class labs for cutting-
| edge research that were the envy of the world. Scientists flocked
| to the U.S. causing other countries to complain of a "brain
| drain."
|
| and:
|
| > Today, China's leadership has spent the last three decades
| investing heavily to surpass the U.S. in science and technology.
|
| In my field (a type of radar related research) in which I've
| worked for almost 30 yrs, papers from China have gone from sparse
| and poorly done imitations of western papers (~15-20 yrs ago), to
| innovative must reads if you want to stay on top of the field.
| Usually when I think of a new idea, it has already been done by
| some Chinese researcher. The Biden administration seemed to
| recognize this issue and put a lot of money toward this field.
| All that money and more is going away. I'm hoping to stay funded
| through the midterms on other projects (and that there are
| midterms), and hoping that the US can get back on track (the one
| that actually made it 'great', at least by the metrics in the
| post.
| rayiner wrote:
| What is the evidence of the connection between indirect cost
| reimbursement and outcomes? This is just blatant propaganda to
| justify public money being used to pay university
| administrators.
| arunabha wrote:
| The GP post explicitly mentioned the growth of Chinese
| research capability that they directly saw. It's no secret
| that China has explicitly and deliberately invested in
| ramping up R&D.
|
| Also, requiring absolute proof in a system as vast and
| complex as R&D at the scale of the US leads to complete
| paralysis. It's a bit like cutting off your fingers because
| you want to lose weight.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It would be interesting to see some discussion of how the
| Chinese research funding system actually works.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That makes the opposite point since Chinese indirect costs
| are 5-25%. e.g. this grant is at 25% https://www.nsfc.gov.c
| n/publish/portal0/tab434/info94303.htm
| nxobject wrote:
| What "outcome" would meet your standards for justifiable
| research spending? Is a 26% cap on the percentage that
| indirects can go to all administration - all staff apart from
| researcher hours directly dedicated to the project - a
| sufficient "outcome"?
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm talking about the part where he talks about the
| government funding indirects specifically, not the research
| funding in general.
|
| > A key component of this U.S. research ecosystem was the
| genius of the indirect cost reimbursement system
| natebc wrote:
| Without the university infrastructure around these Labs
| they'd EACH have to each employ their own construction,
| maintenance, housekeeping, legal, bookkeeping, HR, IT,
| compliance (and more) staff.
|
| There will still be some research done if the cuts to the
| indirects survive the courts but it will be drastically
| reduced in scope as the labs staff will have to cover any
| functions no longer provided by the host university.
|
| And you probably know this but this money isn't getting
| stuffed in to university presidents pockets or anything. It's
| paying (some) of the salaries of ordinary people working at
| jobs that pay about 20% (or more) less than they'd make in
| the private sector.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I don't know that I'd rely too heavily on midterms in 26.
| Gerrymandering and all that.
| sirbutters wrote:
| I don't know why this is getting shadowed. You're absolutely
| right. Gerrymandering is a threat.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I don't see any reason why specifically "indirect cost
| reimbursement" is anything to do with this. Sure, individually
| billing labs is administrative burden, but it's a tiny drop in
| the ocean of inane bureaucracy that university researchers
| already have to deal with today. And maybe if we got rid of the
| blanket overhead percentage, it would put pressure on
| universities to cut a lot of the crap. Researchers are much
| more likely to push back when they see a line item for how much
| that nonsensical bureaucracy is costing them.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| This is a fundamental misunderstanding of research funding,
| and quite frankly repeating it without even basic research
| borders on negligence.
|
| Universities use indirect funds for maintaining facilities,
| the shared equipment, bulk purchases of materials, staff for
| things like cleaning and disposal. It is _pivotal_ that these
| funds are available in the right amount or research
| physically cannot happen despite being "indirect" (due
| merely to the legal definition of the word). And these rates
| are aggressively negotiated beforehand.
|
| Can university administration be trimmed? Can their heads be
| paid less? Of course. But the idea that that's going to
| happen is absurd. If you want to stop that, you make laws and
| regulations. If you want to stop the science, you gut the
| financial viability of research.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I do not believe that sharing costs of facilities and
| equipment is so difficult that research universities can't
| handle it while every condo association in the US somehow
| manages to pull it off. I do not believe you that this is
| aggressively negotiated down by the government because
| private research grants come with much lower indirect costs
| percentages.
|
| > Can university administration be trimmed? Can their heads
| be paid less? Of course. But the idea that that's going to
| happen is absurd.
|
| Well I guess we just have to pay for endlessly expanding
| bureaucracy then, because apparently expecting research
| universities to be somewhat efficient with their resources
| is "absurd."
|
| > If you want to stop that, you make laws and regulations.
|
| Good idea! Maybe we can limit how much they can spend on
| overhead. Oh, wait...
| mrtesthah wrote:
| > _Good idea! Maybe we can limit how much they can spend
| on overhead. Oh, wait..._
|
| Sure, that's Congress' job. The executive branch's
| current attempts to reduce it via executive order have no
| basis in law and therefore are not valid.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| You're clearly not involved even remotely in academia and
| are just parroting bullshit you saw on your news outlet.
| What's even the point when you can just declare "no, it's
| totally a problem and they can just magically make money
| appear and I'm totally aware of the negotiation process
| for grants". Good Lord.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I can see I've hit a nerve here. But it's ok. I
| understand that the fact that private research grants
| contain indirect percentages less than half of the
| federal rate and yet still the universities not refuse
| them is a very difficult thing for you to argue against.
| It's understandable that you would resort to appeals to
| authority and ad hominems when you can't present a
| logical argument.
| csa wrote:
| > papers from China have gone from sparse and poorly done
| imitations of western papers (~15-20 yrs ago), to innovative
| must reads if you want to stay on top of the field. Usually
| when I think of a new idea, it has already been done by some
| Chinese researcher.
|
| Not germane to the main thread, but are the "new idea" papers
| written by Chinese authors mostly published in English,
| Chinese, or both?
|
| If Chinese is part or all of the output, what method do non-
| Chinese reading researchers use to access the contents (e.g.,
| AI translations, abstract journals, etc.)?
|
| As a language nerd, I'm curious. I know that French, German,
| and Russian used to be (and sometimes still are) required
| languages for some graduate students so that they could access
| research texts in the original language. I wonder if that's
| happening with Chinese now.
| blululu wrote:
| In my experience Chinese academics are far more bilingual
| than western ones. I think that for Chinese academics the
| English publications are generally of a higher quality and
| more prestigious, but I'm sure that too will change over
| time. I can definitely say that Chinese publications have
| gotten much better in terms of quality over the last 20 years
| and there are now a lot of results worth translating.
|
| At this point ML translation is sufficiently good that it
| does not make a material difference for the readership. This
| means that there is not a lot of political advantage around
| having a more dominant language. The bigger point is about
| the relative strength of the underlying research communities
| and this is definitely moving in favor of the Chinese.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Chinese language publications may eventually serve the role
| of rapid communications, but for important results it will
| always be in English due to their "trophy culture".
| 1auralynn wrote:
| We are killing the golden goose
| mistrial9 wrote:
| dunno if it is this plain.. the regulatory capture in the last
| 30 years is not null. Especially in very niche, very profitable
| sub-corners of big-S Science.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| A reminder that in a democracy, it's probably best to make sure
| the gold is widely shared. Lest the poorly educated masses of
| people without access to the gold vote to kill the goose.
| fifilura wrote:
| Impossible since that would mean extreme left wing radical
| socialism. And communism.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Sigh.
|
| Unfortunately, your implications are spot on.
|
| We, the people, are our own worst enemies.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| You have to attribute some blame to the elite who run an
| ongoing propaganda campaign for voters to work against
| their own interests.
| apercu wrote:
| Really? Is that your honest take? It's either late stage
| unfettered capitalism, regulatory capture and oligarchy OR
| communism?
|
| Edit: I forgot theocracy.
| fifilura wrote:
| Yeah, sarcasm does not work on internet, I know. I tried
| to paraphrase the ruler in chief.
| apercu wrote:
| Ah, thank you. I was so terribly disappointed to see that
| take on here.
| glial wrote:
| I think the comment was tongue-in-cheek.
| neogodless wrote:
| Unless there could be a less black and white option in the
| middle?
|
| Like a bit more taxes on the wealthiest, a bit more social
| safety nets for the neediest?
| fifilura wrote:
| Yeah obviously.
|
| I am not from USA, but maybe you'll need to figure this
| out on state level? Country level seems rather blocked at
| the moment.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Can't do it, individual states can't print money and
| freedom of movement means the free rider problem will pop
| up quickly.
| fifilura wrote:
| > can't print money
|
| But can they raise taxes?
|
| > freedom of movement
|
| EU also has freedom of movement, but vastly different
| social security systems.
|
| Language is of course an extra barrier, but how much
| people will move is overrated. And maybe you could
| restrict supposed benefits to people who have lived there
| in a few years.
|
| Obviously IANAL, but i am thinking - seems like you
| generally hate your government no matter who it is, so
| maybe states should be a bit more independent.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > But can they raise taxes?
|
| Sure, but the math doesn't work out. Vermont and
| California have both tried in various forms.
|
| > EU also has freedom of movement, blah blah blah
|
| They also coordinated the laws between the member
| countries. That's exactly what the federal government
| would need to do in this case, very good! The EU system
| doesn't work particularly well either, because it's
| loosely confederated. The US government has far more
| ability to coordinate the States.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Sarcasm detector has to be pretty high to catch this one ;)
|
| But you've touched on the problem: any attempt to reform is
| immediately cast as "communism" (also without really
| understanding communism and equating it with soviet
| authoritarianism, but that's another topic).
| fifilura wrote:
| Yeah, cultural difference.
|
| Coming from Europe I think the sarcasm was pretty
| obvious. More like "duh".
| fallingknife wrote:
| Inequality isn't the cause of our problems in the US. It's
| basically the same as it was in the 90s
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA
|
| Inequality in general is a complaint that is most often heard
| from people making 6 figures complaining about billionaires,
| but you don't actually hear it from the "poorly educated
| masses of people without access to the gold" as you put it.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I disagree. Inequality is very much at the root of our
| problems.
|
| But killing the golden goose will not help solve the
| inequality, but only make it worse by making it even more
| expensive and difficult to get into universities with top
| research programs.
| saulpw wrote:
| You can quote statistics to show that "inequality is the
| same", but that's obviously not the case. To wit, Bill
| Gates became the richest person in the '90s with wealth of
| $13 billion. There are now 10 people with more than $100
| billion each. Meanwhile inflation since 1990 has been only
| 2.5x.
|
| The richest individuals have an order of magnitude more
| wealth, and you can't say this is inconsequential when the
| richest person in the world (net worth $300b+) is actively
| leading the effort to dismantle US government institutions.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yes, your anecdote about one person out of 300 million
| has convinced me that the statistics compiled by the
| Federal Reserve about the entire population are clearly
| incorrect.
| ckw wrote:
| 'An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most
| fatal ailment of all republics.'
|
| Plutarch
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| They could have voted socialist at any point in time.
| Americans could have had healthcare, 36 hour work week and a
| pension system.
|
| That is the tragedy of the American empire- instead of
| improving the lives of its citizens all the money went to tax
| cuts.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Could we have though? Last I checked neither majir party
| has seriously persued this. So how are the american people
| to vote for it?
| linguae wrote:
| While currently it's open season on the golden goose in
| America, the golden goose has been under attack for decades.
| Academia has a strong publish-or-perish culture that I believe
| is stifling, and industry has become increasingly short-term
| driven.
|
| Ironically, one of the frustrations I've had with the research
| funding situation long before DOGE's disruptions is the demands
| from funders, particularly in the business world, for golden
| eggs from researchers without any regard of how the research
| process works.
|
| A relevant quote from Alan Kay: "I once gave a talk to Disney
| executives about "new ways to kill the geese that lay the
| golden eggs". For example, set up deadlines and quotas for the
| eggs. Make the geese into managers. Make the geese go to
| meetings to justify their diet and day to day processes. Demand
| golden coins from the geese rather than eggs. Demand platinum
| rather than gold. Require that the geese make plans and explain
| just how they will make the eggs that will be laid. Etc." (from
| https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/)
|
| I dream of a day where we see more places like the old Bell
| Labs and Xerox PARC, and where universities strongly value
| freedom of inquiry with fewer publication and fund-raising
| pressures. However, given the reality that there are many more
| prospective researchers than there are research positions that
| potential funders are willing to support, it's natural that
| there is some mechanism used to determine which researchers get
| access to jobs and funding.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| How? Money.
|
| There is one problem with the current US system: it overproduces
| talent. When the US system was growing rapidly, the people could
| build a long-term career in the US. But nothing can grow forever
| at an exponential pace. The US continues to pour plenty of money
| into STEM, but it can't keep up with the pace of grad student
| production.
|
| People are making smart, individual decisions to head overseas
| for work. Places like China are rewarding them.
| anon291 wrote:
| > People are making smart, individual decisions to head
| overseas for work. Places like China are rewarding them.
|
| Wait what? I know that many Chinese students are staying in
| China, but this is the first I've heard of a substantial
| demographic immigrating to China to work there, esp from the
| US. Do you have data?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| It's not widespread. But China has made an effort to offer
| obscene amounts of money to attract smart professors and
| researchers to switch to Chinese universities as they've
| tried to build up their top-tier beyond Beida and Tsinghua.
| nextos wrote:
| One annecdata. When I handed in my doctoral thesis in
| Oxbridge, I was contacted by a recruiter from PRC that
| offered me generous startup funds ($600k-1M) and salary to
| bootstrap my own academic lab at Tsinghua, Fudan, or other
| top universities. It'd take me 4-6 years to get an equivalent
| offer in UK or EU where experience and connections are much
| more important than talent.
|
| I am European and I do basic research in science. They seem
| to be very interested in fundamental science and investing
| heavily in lots of subfields. As discussed in other comments,
| the improvement in their research quality during the last
| decade is nothing short of impressive.
| anon291 wrote:
| Interesting
| nextos wrote:
| I didn't even reply, as I didn't want to taint my
| profile. But it looked very interesting and serious.
|
| Plus, from this one can infer they are clearly scouting
| researchers in a systematic way.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It overproduces credentialed morons. Giving someone a degree
| doesn't confer talent. And when you insist on an ever
| increasing percentage of the population attend college, the
| result is exactly as you would expect.
| lvl155 wrote:
| Gonna state the obvious: freedom and peace. People mention money
| but money followed technological boom. And, yes, peace derived
| from military.
| pphysch wrote:
| You might clarify "domestic peace". America has been one of the
| most secure nations in history from large-scale domestic
| invasion (it's essentially never happened: Pearl Harbor,
| isolated terrorist attacks, and "open borders" don't come
| close). That said, it has virtually always been actively
| involved in foreign conflicts and shadow wars during its 250
| year history.
|
| And yes, it's domestic security that enables long-term
| investment in science.
| lvl155 wrote:
| I would clarify it as relative peace. People simply left
| other parts of the world to pursue their dreams. If Europe
| weren't basically war torn every couple of decades all the
| way up to the end of WWII, America might not have made it
| this far. And that's why I don't believe China will ever be
| that great until they reject pseudo-communist regime.
| cs702 wrote:
| Worth reading in its entirety. The following four paragraphs,
| about post-WWII funding of science in Britain versus the US, are
| spot-on, in my view:
|
| _> Britain's focused, centralized model using government
| research labs was created in a struggle for short-term survival.
| They achieved brilliant breakthroughs but lacked the scale,
| integration and capital needed to dominate in the post-war world.
|
| > The U.S. built a decentralized, collaborative ecosystem, one
| that tightly integrated massive government funding of
| universities for research and prototypes while private industry
| built the solutions in volume.
|
| > A key component of this U.S. research ecosystem was the genius
| of the indirect cost reimbursement system. Not only did the U.S.
| fund researchers in universities by paying the cost of their
| salaries, the U.S. gave universities money for the researchers
| facilities and administration. This was the secret sauce that
| allowed U.S. universities to build world-class labs for cutting-
| edge research that were the envy of the world. Scientists flocked
| to the U.S. causing other countries to complain of a "brain
| drain."
|
| > Today, U.S. universities license 3,000 patents, 3,200
| copyrights and 1,600 other licenses to technology startups and
| existing companies. Collectively, they spin out over 1,100
| science-based startups each year, which lead to countless
| products and tens of thousands of new jobs. This
| university/government ecosystem became the blueprint for modern
| innovation ecosystems for other countries._
|
| The author's most important point is at the very end of the OP:
|
| _> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for
| university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science
| may be over._
| duxup wrote:
| It seems like for all the silliness and inefficiency that comes
| with a decentralized system ... the decentralized nature of US
| science research allowed for more "possibilities" and that paid
| off economically in spades.
|
| Like speech, ideas require an open field with a lot of garbage
| to hit many home runs.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I think a lot of the decentralization also correlated up with
| a wide range of directions, with decisions to pursue activity
| made at much lower levels than happens today.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I expect every serious/successful researcher, artist, or
| other creative problem solver would agree that even within
| the ultimate centralization of work, all in one person, a low
| bar for exploration of ideas and potential solutions is
| helpful.
|
| The problem terrain insights generated by many "failures" are
| what make resolving interesting trivial, silly and unlikely
| questions so helpful. They generate novel knowledge and new
| ways of thinking about things. They often point the way to
| useful but previously not envisioned work.
|
| Edison and the long line of "failed" lightbulbs is a cliche,
| but still rich wisdom.
|
| But 1000 Edisons working on 1000 highly different "light
| bulb" problems, sharing the seemingly random insights they
| each learn along the way, are going to make even faster
| progress -- often not in anticipated directions.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm reminded of the old Connections tv series where huge
| breakthroughs are often a result of tons of abject failures
| that later, and unpredictably, come together.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| We have to dispense with the silliness of comparing the US with
| countries a tenth its size. If you want to compare Britain to
| the US, pick a state of comparable size and do so. Otherwise
| you're comparing apples to much larger apples.
| anon7000 wrote:
| Why? Britain was considered a larger power in the world until
| around WWII.
| soperj wrote:
| Because it was, it had a bigger population than the US does
| currently. Then all those countries under it's thumb
| declared independence, and that changed things
| considerably.
| thenobsta wrote:
| I wonder if the analogy might be more like comparing an apple
| tree evolving in a forest vs breeding varieties of apples on
| a farm.
|
| Even if you pick a state, science in any single state has
| still gotten federal funding and had the ability to easily
| cross-pollinate with other very good researchers across state
| boarders. The federal funding then gets redirected to areas
| of success and the flywheel starts.
|
| That's harder on the scale of a small country.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I don't disagree which is why I encourage comparing the EU
| to the US as a whole.
| jack_h wrote:
| > In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for
| university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science
| may be over.
|
| I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in
| the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on
| bankruptcy. It couldn't afford the broad and deep investments
| that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an
| existential problem. Last year the second largest outlay behind
| social security was the interest payment at a trillion dollars.
| This is a trillion dollars that cannot be used to provide
| government services. Over the next 30 years the primary driver
| of debt will be medicare and interest payments, the former due
| to demographic shifts and the US being pretty unhealthy
| overall. Our deficit is (last I checked) projected to be 7.3%
| of GDP this year. That means that if congress voted to defund
| the _entire_ military and the _entire_ federal government (park
| services, FBI, law clerks, congressional salaries, everything)
| we would still have to borrow. Those two things combined are
| only ~25% of federal outlays.
|
| I also reject the idea that this government-university
| partnership is somehow perfect. Over time bureaucracy tends to
| increase which increases overhead. This happens in private
| industry, government, universities, everywhere. However, there
| is no failure mechanism when it comes to government-university
| partnerships. At least in the free market inefficient companies
| will eventually go defunct which frees those resources for more
| economically useful output. Universities will continue to
| become more bureaucratic so long as the government keeps
| sending them more money. All of these economic effects must be
| viewed over very long periods of time. It's not enough to setup
| a system, see that it produced positive results, and assume it
| will continue to do so 80 years later.
|
| Really this reads like a pleas from special interest groups who
| receive federal funding. Every special interest group will be
| doing this. That's the issue though. A lot of special interest
| groups who have a financial incentive to keep the money flowing
| despite the looming consequences to the USD.
| Retric wrote:
| US government funding of science isn't a net cost due to
| taxes on the long term economic productivity that results.
| This is unlike say corn subsidies which not only reduce
| economic efficiency but also have direct negative heath
| impacts furthering the harm.
|
| Medicare spending is problematic because it's consumptive,
| but there's ways to minimize the expense without massively
| reducing care. The VA for example dramatically reduces their
| costs by operating independent medical facilities. That's
| unlikely to fly, but assuming nothing changes is equally
| unlikely.
| jack_h wrote:
| Even if those attribution studies are 100% correct that
| doesn't mean this system optimally allocates resources.
|
| The ultimate issue with our social programs is due to
| demographics. An aging population whose replacement rate is
| projected to go negative (more deaths than births) within
| the next few years is catastrophic for the way we fund
| those programs. We absolutely should try and reduce their
| operating costs though; I agree with that.
| Retric wrote:
| Noting people do is 100% optimal, but productivity gains
| mean resource constraint problems are more solvable than
| they first appear.
|
| People are worried about automation driving people out of
| the workplace while others are worried about a lack of
| workers due to changing demographics. What's going to
| happen is the result of a bunch of different forces,
| simplified projections are easy to make and unlikely to
| prove accurate.
| monknomo wrote:
| I mean, a relatively easy fix to a negative replacement
| rate (at least when you have a well-run, wealthy,
| attractive country) is immigration. Replacement rate
| isn't a problem when you let more folks in
| consumer451 wrote:
| I agree, but this only works if one is willing to accept
| a changing racial profile/culture. It appears that many
| people do not accept this idea. Not just in the USA, but
| look at Japan or South Korea, for example.
|
| To me, the really interesting question is how to stop
| what appears to have been inevitable for the last 40+
| years: when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth
| rates drop to tragic levels. I believe what could help
| here involves all kinds of non-market solutions which are
| hard to solve, and very not cool at the moment.
|
| The reason that I find this important is that even though
| I personally have no problem with race/culture mixing,
| in-fact I love Korean BBQ tacos... eventually with the
| immigration solution, there is an end state where all
| societies and countries are economically advanced, and
| have negative birth rates. What then? As a Star Trek fan,
| I have ideas about post-scarcity.
| exe34 wrote:
| > when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates
| drop to tragic levels.
|
| heck maybe that's what trump's doing - tank the American
| economy and hope it brings the birth rate back up...
| nostrademons wrote:
| Fertility rates are below replacement on every continent
| except Africa, and they're dropping quickly there.
| Immigration isn't going to save us, at least not long-
| term.
|
| I think what'll happen is that areas that still have a
| vibrant age pyramid will put up borders (either
| geographic or economic or both) with ones that don't, and
| say "Sorry, you're on your own" to the latter. They
| protect their children at the expense of their elders,
| basically. It won't be national borders either: the
| fertility issue cuts across most major nations, but there
| are certain regions where people still raise children.
| XorNot wrote:
| Stop trying to solve problems 100 years from now in other
| countries though.
|
| The US is an enormously attractive immigration target and
| can easily bring in enormous numbers of new workers if it
| wants to. It's so good at this that it actually _has_ and
| those people pay taxes but don 't get government
| benefits.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| This doesn't fix your problem if the people you let in
| cost more than they contribute in taxes. See for example
| the Netherlands where non-Western immigrants are large
| net negative contributors and their children are no
| better. https://docs.iza.org/dp17569.pdf
|
| Similar results apply in Denmark.
| https://docs.iza.org/dp8844.pdf
|
| EU style negatively selected immigration where easily a
| billion people are eligible for asylum and refugee status
| with easy family reunification means immigration is a
| large net negative fiscal contributor.
| tw04 wrote:
| Have you ever actually worked with a Fortune 500 company?
| I'm assuming not or you'd know "inefficient allocation of
| resources" isn't a government issue, it's a large
| organization issue that's as bad if not worse in the
| private sector.
| wskinner wrote:
| There is a natural garbage collection mechanism for
| corporations that become too inefficient. Inefficient
| government agencies can last much longer.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| There was; now we have bailouts. "Too big to fail".
| FredPret wrote:
| While true, you overstate the problem. Look up the
| companies in the S&P 500 today, 10 years ago, 20, 30, 50.
| There are dramatic changes with only a handful of long
| term survivors.
| jasonhong wrote:
| Optimal relative to what? And more seriously, name any
| large program, government or corporate, that is
| "optimal".
|
| Google, Duolingo, and DataBricks are three multibillion
| dollar tech companies based in part on NSF research. The
| return on investment from NSF-funded research spinning
| out into companies is enormous.
|
| While the system could use some tuning, it also works
| pretty well as is. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of
| the good.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _that doesn't mean this system optimally allocates
| resources._
|
| When's the last time someone in the Trump administration
| "optimally allocated resources" in a way that didn't
| "allocate" them to his or her own bank account?
| linksnapzz wrote:
| As a purely practical matter, trying to fix federal
| budget outlays by cutting indirect funds attached to
| NSF/NIH/DOE etc. grants is like telling a guy who is
| morbidly obese by 350lbs that you can lose weight quickly
| by shaving your head and trimming your fingernails
| really, really close.
| philwelch wrote:
| > US government funding of science isn't a net cost due to
| taxes on the long term economic productivity that results.
|
| There's an assumption here that deserves some closer
| examination. If we are taking this as a justification for
| federal science spending, we would have to also support a
| policy of awarding research grants on the basis of expected
| long term return on investment, which is not the criteria
| applied now. Furthermore, we would have to justify this
| spending in competition with whatever economic investments
| the government could make elsewhere, or that the American
| taxpayers would make if we let them keep their money in the
| first place. From the standpoint of scientific research I
| don't think this is necessarily what we want, but even if
| it was we would have some hard questions about the last few
| decades of federal research funding.
| jasonhong wrote:
| First, it's highly unclear a priori which scientific
| discoveries will pay off. The discoverer of Green
| Fluorescent Protein was denied funding, with others
| eventually winning the Nobel Prize for it. Same for mRNA
| vaccines, most recently featured in COVID-19 vaccine,
| which also recently won a Nobel Prize.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3
|
| Second, while there are always improvements to be made,
| the system _as is_ (or was) worked pretty well in
| practice without knowing what the expected ROI was. The
| PageRank algorithm which led to Google was funded in part
| by an NSF grant on Digital Libraries. The ROI on that
| single invention just from taxes, jobs, and increased
| productivity likely exceeds NSF 's annual budget.
| DataBricks and Duolingo are also based in part on NSF
| research.
|
| Yeah, the system is imperfect, _as all human-oriented
| systems are_ , but for the most part it works pretty well
| in practice and has been a linchpin in the US economic
| growth and national security.
| philwelch wrote:
| If we're going to count the COVID-19 vaccine as a benefit
| of federal research funding, surely we need to also count
| COVID-19 itself as a cost, given the strong evidence that
| the virus was a product of US-funded gain of function
| research.
| kergonath wrote:
| I don't think that is the point. The argument is usually
| that we cannot predict what will be "high impact" 20
| years from now but the current system works well enough
| that it is a net benefit despite a lot of research not
| being directly applicable in the end.
| hedora wrote:
| So, the current system generates net income for the
| government, but you're claiming it needs to be changed in
| order to do so?
| rsfern wrote:
| NSF has actually been experimenting with this sort of
| funding model for a couple years through its new (as of
| 2019) convergence accelerator program, which I think is
| awesome. It's explicitly a multi-sector program where
| academics partner with companies to do some proof of
| concept research in a phase 1 award and translate that
| into a viable commercial product or innovation in a phase
| 2 award. Potential for long term return on investment is
| explicitly part of the review criteria, which target this
| sort of historically underfunded middle ground between
| basic research and technology development
|
| https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/convergence-
| accelera...
| 9283409232 wrote:
| The problem with US debt comes from their unwillingness to
| tax billionaires. We just passed even more tax cuts for rich
| people and are scheduled to add more to the debt. Just tax
| rich people, it's not complicated.
| jack_h wrote:
| The economic projections I've seen have shown taxing the
| rich will increase tax revenue by around 1.5% of GDP. We're
| slated to borrow 7.3%. That math doesn't work. To be fair,
| the republican math with cuts (assuming no tax cuts) _also_
| doesn't work. Neither side is serious about this issue.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| Taxing billionaires is just one of many necessary steps
| but it is the most important and vital step in my
| opinion. There are fundamental problems with how the US
| is run down to the local level but it starts with taxing
| billionaires and getting money out of politics.
| jack_h wrote:
| To be clear, I think raising taxes on _everyone_ is going
| to have to happen along with spending cuts.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| What does the ideal solution look like to you? Are you
| happy with what DOGE is doing and if not what would you
| change? I'm asking genuinely because I don't think enough
| people put forth ideas in their own right.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Why point at billionaires, anyone with more than a
| million is living a comfortable life, everybody should be
| doing their part.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| Billionaires are the ones actively fucking the world and
| seeking tax cuts but you're right, there are plenty of
| multimillionaires that need to be paying their share.
| mola wrote:
| You can tax the rich, and then cut less of the good
| stuff. Or you can cut taxes and decimate everything.
| Guess what the billionaire class chose.
| jack_h wrote:
| I fully expect uncomfortable spending cuts with raising
| taxes while trying to balance economic growth in order to
| correct this problem. Im dissatisfied with what both
| sides of the isle are actually doing.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| How can there possibly be an answer to "how much will tax
| revenue increase if we tax the rich" without specifying
| _how much_ we tax the rich, and how we define the rich?
| fallingknife wrote:
| If you use a reasonable definition of rich like 150k for
| individuals then yes it could work. But that's not what
| people actually mean when they say it.
| jltsiren wrote:
| From their unwillingness to tax people. American tax
| revenue as a fraction of GDP is 6-7 percentage points lower
| than in the average OECD country. That gap is over $1.5
| trillion/year.
| philwelch wrote:
| False. The combined net worth of all US billionaires is
| about 6 trillion dollars. The US national debt is over 36
| trillion dollars.
| kbelder wrote:
| As the saying goes, Republicans can't do science, and
| Democrats can't do math.
|
| All this 'just tax the billionaires' is the latter.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| If you thought I, or anyone else thinks that by taxing
| billionaires we would pay off the entirety of the debt, I
| don't know what to tell you bud.
| 6510 wrote:
| The rich half of the US populus own about $156 trillion.
| Thus therefore as a conclusion therefrom you only have to
| take 23% from half the population. Lets make it
| progressive from 0% at average wealth to 52% at the top.
|
| Much less than Roosevelt's 94%
|
| But I'm neither democrat nor republican, it might not
| make sense to anyone :)
| netsharc wrote:
| > The US debt is starting to become an existential problem.
|
| Really...? Until Liberation Day the other week, I would doubt
| this. The whole world holds the US dollar, if the USA fails
| (side-glare at Donald and Elon), the whole world goes into
| chaos. If President Harris had said "OK world, we need to
| borrow x more dollars to keep this country running", people
| (private creditors and nations) would say "I'm pretty sure
| the USA will still be a solid economy in 10 (or 30 years), x%
| ROI if I lend them money? Sure!".
|
| And as this chart says, it's not all owned by "Chaina":
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-
| u-s-...
| jack_h wrote:
| This has nothing to do with Trump beyond the fact that his
| plans could hasten how quickly this blows up. Bond rates
| were already going up before the election, the bond market
| was already nervous. Your indication that the world isn't
| starting to have doubts isn't born out by the bond market
| rates.
|
| > And as this chart says, it's not all owned by "Chaina"
|
| I never said that. China has been rolling US debt off of
| their books for a decade now and moving towards BRICS.
|
| If we make this a partisan issue, which you appear to be,
| we won't solve this problem. That would be a catastrophic
| mistake.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Bond rates were already going up before the election_
|
| Treasuries behaving like a risk asset is 100% Trump. And
| it has nothing to do with him blowing out our deficit,
| it's 100% about stagflation and money markets.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Are you saying that hastening the catastrophe is the
| right move?
| jack_h wrote:
| No.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Ok. You never know what you are going to hear on HN :)
| vkou wrote:
| > Bond rates were already going up before the election,
|
| Do you think the fact that there was a 40-70% (and I'm
| being optimistic, here) chance that the election would
| elect Trump [1] had _anything at all_ to do with that?
|
| ---
|
| [1] Who made his plans for destroying both the American
| hegemony and global trade, and its domestic economy quite
| clear.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Not everyone is happy to depend on USD. BRICs were making
| plans to introduce their own alternative reserve currency.
| Trump once threatened 100% tariffs if they followed through
| with that.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/aggressive-
| tariffs-f...
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-
| threatens-100-...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-02/south-
| afr...
| alabastervlog wrote:
| It's not wrong.
|
| We were doing great in 2000.
|
| [EDIT] Plus of course there's the '01 crash in here, which
| doesn't help matters, as those never do.
|
| Bush pushed through a huge tax cut while launching two
| extremely expensive wars, one of which was definitely not
| necessary (arguably, neither of them were a good idea--I'd
| have argued that at the time, certainly).
|
| Then, financial crisis. You (under orthodox modern
| political-economy and national fiscal policy guidance)
| usually try to reserve your biggest deficit spending for
| exactly these kinds of cases. We had no "cushion" because
| we'd wasted it on tax cuts and wars. The deficit goes very
| unwisely deep.
|
| Then, Obama. Tax cuts not reversed under the democrats.
| Wars not ended (fast enough). More expensive foreign
| adventures, in fact, though not really comparable to the
| budgetary catastrophes of Iraq and Afghanistan. At least
| the economy recovers, but we don't get back to what _should
| be_ baseline levels of deficit spending, we stay way too
| deep in the red.
|
| Then, Trump. More tax cuts. Deeper in the red.
|
| And wouldn't you know it, another disaster! Covid. If only
| we weren't already in awful territory with our budget...
| but we are, and deficit spending beats a bad recession and
| _still_ seeing bad budget results due to a weakened
| economy, so, more spending it is, because _that is what you
| do_ in these cases, you 're just not supposed to start from
| such a poor position.
|
| Biden. Little done to fix any of that, aside from doing a
| pretty good job managing Covid on the econ side (which, I
| have my complaints, but credit where it's due)
|
| Trump again. We're likely to see tax receipts drop due to
| IRS cuts and a declining economy, this time for no good
| reason. And they're talking tax cuts... again.
|
| So yeah, we were on track to need _decades_ of very-careful
| policy to let our GDP catch up with our debt, without
| making big cuts. And we 'd _have to_ raise taxes back to
| late-90s levels for that to work, anyway.
|
| That many years of responsible management weren't gonna
| happen. Tax increases evidently aren't, either.
| Realistically, we were on track to eventually hit and have
| to work through a crisis over this, probably early in the
| back half of this century.
|
| This administration appears to be moving that point many,
| many years earlier, though.
| regularization wrote:
| The way they math is presented is off. The US is deficit
| spending this year, yet you present the interest payment as
| something separate from the military. Obviously that interest
| is partially from the military spending the US makes this
| year that it has not paid for, military payments from last
| year it has not paid for etc. The billions sent to Israel,
| the Ukraine and the hundreds of military bases the US has
| spanning the globe are not cheap.
|
| Also, a lot of other military expenses are not counted as
| military expenditures in your math. A veteran whose leg was
| blown off overseas going to a VA hospital is not a military
| expenditure in this math.
|
| If you have an extremely narrow definition of military
| spending, you can make it look small, but if you count
| veteran's benefits, interest on past military adventures etc.
| It looks larger. Why are Navy ships being shot at off Yemen,
| to cover for what the UN committee investigating it found is
| an ongoing genocide in Gaza. Which is also helping bankruptcy
| the US, as you pointed out
| jack_h wrote:
| I have no idea what you're talking about honestly. The data
| for government spending can be seen in multiple places,
| here is the CBO numbers (this might be an older article or
| out of date, I don't have time or access to a laptop right
| now).
|
| https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61172
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| What the GP is talking about is that there are differing
| opinions on what counts as "military spending" or
| "defense spending". The CBO has its definition, but that
| is not universally accepted, particularly by people who
| think that the USA spends far too much on its military.
|
| The question of whether or not e.g. veteran's health care
| should be considered part of military spending is not a
| stupid one, even if people may differ on their answers.
| jack_h wrote:
| I suppose that's fair, but kind of tangential. The point
| I was making was that if discretionary spending,
| approximately 25% of outlays, could be completely cut we
| would still have a deficit. I'm not suggesting this is
| even possible, I'm merely using it as a demonstration of
| the scale of the problem.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| I'd still quibble with your whole framing though. For
| example:
|
| > This is a trillion dollars that cannot be used to
| provide government services.
|
| I don't know if you have a mortgage, but assuming you do,
| is it useful to say of the interest payments you make on
| that "this is X dollars that cannot be used to buy food,
| heat, gas or streaming services" ? I suggest that it is
| not, and for reasons that apply to government too.
|
| Capital investments, and debt more broadly, comes in
| good, bad and indifferent varieties. Some portion of the
| US national debt arises from spending on "good" things,
| some on "bad" things and quite a bit on "indifferent"
| things. There's no point in (accurately) noting that a
| mortgage payer cannot use the money they pay in interest
| to pay for other things, because we (broadly) accept that
| borrowing money in order to own your own home is sensible
| and comes with lots of its own utility/value. Whatever
| portion of US national debt arises from "good" spending
| can be viewed in the same manner.
|
| Of course, how the actual apportionment between
| good/bad/indifferent spending is described will vary with
| political outlook and many other things, so there's no
| single answer to the question "how much of the national
| debt is a good thing". But it's certainly _some_ of it
| ...
| jack_h wrote:
| I think we're actually broadly in agreement. I'm
| unfortunately busy at work so I'm not articulating my
| position as well as I perhaps should, but I don't think
| all debt or deficit spending is bad. It absolutely has a
| place and should be utilized. I don't think this explains
| the US though. We've already hit 100% public debt to GDP
| (or 120% total debt to GDP) and I'm not seeing this
| slowing down. The last projections from the congressional
| budget going into reconciliation is a doubling of public
| debt in 10 years from what I remember.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| > I suggest that it is not, and for reasons that apply to
| government too.
|
| I disagree, I think it is useful, and in fact important
| for young people to carefully consider the size of their
| mortgage and the interest they have to pay.
|
| A persons long term financial health can be greatly
| impacted by the size of their mortgage, and I would
| always recommend taking the smallest possible loan.
| Taking a mortgage only makes sense if you would otherwise
| have to pay rent.
|
| Same applies to governments.
|
| In fact, I go one step further and think its shocking
| that one generation of people would leave behind a
| massive debt for their children and grandchildren have to
| service.
|
| I don't agree with how DOGE is going about things, and
| I'm not a US citizen, but I strongly believe governments
| should be generating surpluses for their children to
| enjoy, not deficits for their children to pay off.
| mindslight wrote:
| Where does government subsidized loans to banks (eg Fed,
| Fannie, Freddie) sit in your list? The government is a
| monetary sovereign - it cannot run out of dollars to use. The
| actual constraint is that creating too much new money creates
| too much price inflation. But for the past decades most
| monetary inflation has been flowing into the financial sector
| and bidding up the asset bubbles, with the "fiscal
| responsibility" political narrative merely being a dishonest
| cover to keep that gravy train flowing.
| contemporary343 wrote:
| Actually overheads for many universities were sometimes
| higher in the late 1990s (and there were some minor scandals
| associated with this). And remind me again, what fraction of
| our GDP is indirect costs to universities? (< 0.1%). And what
| are the benefits? Well, indirect costs are how the U.S.
| government builds up a distributed network of scientific and
| technical infrastructure and capacity. This capacity serves
| the national interest.
|
| If you think you're going to help debt by cutting indirect
| costs and crippling university research permanently, may I
| introduce you to the foundational notions of a knowledge
| economy and how fundamental advances feed into technology
| developments that increase productivity and thus GDP.
| Permanently reducing growth is another way of making debt
| servicing worse.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| Federally funded R&D was around 3.4% of the GDP in 2021:
| https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23339.
| tvier wrote:
| The chart in that link seems to indicate it was 0.6%, while
| _total_ R &D funding was 3.4%
| tw04 wrote:
| I guess what is your point though? The current administration
| has absolutely no plans to reduce debt as a part of these
| funding cuts. They plan on INCREASING debt by issuing massive
| tax breaks that no amount of cutting will fund. It's right
| there in their own budget.
|
| If anything they're taking the worst of all worlds by
| sacrificing future revenue (by way of new technology that can
| be sold) to give money to people who don't need it right now.
| If you think the US is going to remain the center of the
| western world's economic universe, or that any of our allies
| are going to remain on a dollar standard when we can't be
| relied upon militarily or otherwise, I think you're in for a
| very rude awakening.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today?
| By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had
| stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island
| nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless
| global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain
| and a massive military left over from the war. The situation
| was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war and
| there were coal shortages.
|
| Britain was at a point where without massive aid from the US
| huge numbers of people would die of cold or starvation. The
| US has huge surpluses of food and energy.
|
| The idea that we're in such a crisis that we have to eat our
| own seed corn (massive cuts to science research which is one
| of the main drivers of US economic growth) is crazy.
| philwelch wrote:
| > How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US
| today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves,
| it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an
| island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a
| restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money
| to maintain and a massive military left over from the war.
| The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years
| after the war and there were coal shortages.
|
| Up until you got to the rationing and coal shortages I
| think the parallels with the contemporary US are pretty
| obvious.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| No, not really. The fact that we import so much is a
| function of our wealth, not our poverty. We import food
| because we like to have a variety of produce year round
| and we like alcohol from foreign countries and we can
| afford it. Britain was importing food because otherwise
| there would be famine.
|
| These are not equivalent situations.
| philwelch wrote:
| It's true that the United States does not depend on food
| and energy imports. However, the growing fiscal situation
| and unsustainable costs of maintaining global hegemony
| are very similar to that of Britain in the 20th century,
| as is the declining competitiveness of American industry.
| You're never going to find any exact or perfect
| historical parallels but there are enough similarities to
| cause concern.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| No, it really, really isn't. The key difference is that
| the US can finance deficits and Britain couldn't. There's
| huge appetite all over the world to buy US government
| debt and to invest in the US. The UK needed massive
| foreign aid just to survive.
| grafmax wrote:
| The idea that the free market will self-correct and optimize
| outcomes is a well-documented fantasy. Markets don't account
| for externalities, they concentrate wealth (and therefore
| political power), and they routinely underprovide merit goods
| like education, healthcare, and basic research (things that
| benefit society broadly but aren't immediately profitable).
|
| As for how to address budget issues, the solution is simple:
| tax the rich.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Im afraid you'd need to be pretty liberal with your
| definition of rich at this point to dig us out of this hole
| through taxes alone.
| sgregnt wrote:
| >The idea that the free market will self-correct and
| optimize outcomes is a well-documented fantasy.
|
| Could you share some sources to back this up? At least a
| sources to back up at least a few case studies would be
| curious. I'm interested in economics and never have been
| aware that free market self-correction is a well documented
| fantasy and would love to understand where is your claim
| coming from.
| woooooo wrote:
| Libertarians took over a town in NH and abolished town
| wide garbage collection. The free market produced a bunch
| of trash in people's yards, which attracted bears,
| causing havoc all around town. True story.
|
| That's not to say you can't solve a lot of problems with
| markets. It just means waving your hands at "the free
| market" like it's a magic talisman is a childish thing to
| do.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Why didn't they just shoot the bears? You'd figure
| libertarians would be all for that.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The idea that the free market will self-correct and
| optimize outcomes is a well-documented fantasy.
|
| There are far too many documented instances of it actually
| working to call it a fantasy.
|
| > Markets don't account for externalities
|
| Markets aren't expected to account for externalities.
| Externalities are the things you're _supposed_ to tax.
|
| > they concentrate wealth (and therefore political power)
|
| You're describing regulatory capture. This is why
| governments are supposed to have limited powers. To keep
| them from passing rules that enrich cronies and entrench
| incumbents.
|
| > they routinely underprovide merit goods like education,
| healthcare, and basic research (things that benefit society
| broadly but aren't immediately profitable)
|
| Markets are actually pretty good at providing all of those
| things. There are plenty of high quality private schools,
| high quality private medical facilities and high quality
| private research labs.
|
| The real problem here is that some people can't _afford_
| those things. But now you 're making the case for a UBI so
| people can afford those things when they otherwise
| couldn't, not for having the government actually operate
| the doctor's office.
|
| > As for how to address budget issues, the solution is
| simple: tax the rich.
|
| Is it so simple? The highest marginal tax rate in the US is
| 50.3% (37% federal + 13.3% state in California). The
| highest marginal tax rate in Norway is 47.4%.
|
| Meanwhile most of what the rich own are investment
| securities like stocks and US treasuries. What happens if
| you increase their taxes? They have less to invest. The
| stocks then go to someone not being taxed, i.e. foreign
| investors, so more of the future returns of US companies
| leave the country. Fewer treasury buyers increase the
| interest rate the US pays on the debt. Fewer stock buyers
| lower stock prices, which reduce capital gains and
| therefore capital gains tax revenue. Fewer stock buyers
| make it harder for companies to raise money, which lowers
| employment and wages, and therefore tax revenue again.
| Increasing the proportion of tax revenue that comes from
| "the rich" causes an _extremely_ perverse incentive
| whenever you ask the Congressional Budget Office to do the
| numbers on how a policy that would transfer wealth from the
| rich to the middle class would affect tax revenue, and the
| policy correspondingly gets shelved.
|
| TANSTAAFL.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There are numerous errors in this.
|
| The most obvious is that social security money somehow
| disappears into a black hole. Of course it doesn't. All of
| that money is spent on _something_ - usually useful things
| produced and sold by businesses.
|
| The subtext with complaints about government spending is
| usually that this money is being handed out to the morally
| undeserving, and this - by some bizarre alchemy - is the
| direct cause of a weaker dollar.
|
| In reality the deficit is the difference between _money
| collected in taxes and money spent._ Failing to close that
| gap by raising taxation on those who hoard wealth offshore,
| spend it on unproductive toys, and buy up key assets like
| property is an ideological choice, not an economic necessity.
|
| The deficit is a direct result of unproductive wealth
| hoarding facilitated by unnecessary tax cuts, not of public
| spending.
|
| But it's hard to get this point across in a country where
| "Why should I pay taxes to subsidise my neghbour's health
| care?" is taken seriously as a talking point, but "Why are
| corporations bankrupting half a million people year instead
| of paying out for health insurance as contracted?" is
| considered ideological extremism.
|
| As for the rest - the US was clearly at its strongest and
| most innovative and productive when taxes were high and the
| government was funding original R&D before handing it over to
| the private sector for marketing and commercial development.
|
| The funding part including training generations of PhDs.
|
| That's literally how the computer industry started.
|
| The idea that an ideologically pure private sector can do
| this on its own without getting stuck in the usual tar pits
| of quarterly short-termism, cranky narcissistic
| mismanagement, and toxic oligopoly is a pipe dream.
|
| US corporate culture can't do long-term strategy. It's always
| going to aim for the nearest short-term maximum while missing
| bigger rewards that are years or even decades out.
| guelo wrote:
| A lot of our deficit is because of Trump's 10 year tax cuts,
| which Republicans are about to re-extend. Trump does not care
| about debt, he just wants to destroy government institutions.
| vkou wrote:
| > The US debt is starting to become an existential problem.
|
| 1. No, it isn't. And if you think the finances of the US in
| 2025 are remotely similar to the finances and the world
| position of the British Empire in 1945, you are staggeringly
| wrong about either the past, or the present, or both.
|
| 2. And if it were, there's a million lower-ROI things that
| could be cut. Does an isolationist America really need
| _eleven_ carrier groups, in a world where there are _zero_
| non-American ones?
| oldprogrammer2 wrote:
| Systems don't remain constant, though, and every system gets
| "gamed" once the incentives are well understood. I'm 100% for
| investment in scientific research, but I'm skeptical that the
| current system is efficient at allocating the funds. We've seen
| so many reports of celebrity scientists committing fraud at our
| most elite institutions, and a publish or perish model that
| encourages that bad behavior as well as junk science that will
| have minimal impact on their fields. We pay taxes to fund
| science so that universities or corporations can claim
| ownership and make us pay for the results.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Sure, but what has that to do with the administration's
| attack on funding and independence? As someone whose lost a
| grant award under the current administration's attack on
| science, I can tell you with assurance that this is more
| about political power and revenge than it is about improving
| scientific rigor. If we continue on this path, we will only
| get worse at science as a nation.
|
| There are reforms that should be pursued: restructuring
| grants away from endless and arduous begging for money
| through the tedious grant process of today towards something
| more like block grants
| homieg33 wrote:
| > As someone whose lost a grant award under the current
| administration's attack on science, I can tell you with
| assurance that this is more about political power and
| revenge than it is about improving scientific rigor.
|
| I'm sorry to hear this, but curious what makes you certain
| of this? Revenge for what? I ask, because I hear this same
| template over and over with this administration. eg. DOGE
| isn't about government efficiency its about revenge.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Literally nothing about their approach resembles an
| attempt at efficiency. Efficiency is a ratio of input
| resources to output. No part of the DOGE program I've
| seen or heard of even considers that relationship. Simply
| firing people at best results in reduced output, or
| hiring more expensive contractors. And you've flushed
| institutional knowledge down the toilet. It's like
| turning a car off and pretending you've boosted its fuel
| efficiency because nothing is burning. Except that the
| car saved you time on other tasks, oops. Firing people
| and then immediately having to rehire them is hilariously
| inefficient. Rewriting legacy software like they're
| attempting at Social Security is a classically
| inefficient blunder.
|
| I don't know if it's all about revenge, but it's
| absolutely not about efficiency. It's an edgy teen's idea
| of tough governance. It's the epitome of penny wise,
| pound foolish. It's false economy all the way down.
| prpl wrote:
| >>> We've seen so many reports of celebrity scientists
| committing fraud at our most elite institutions
|
| Can you define "many"? 100k reports? 10k reports? 1k reports?
| 150 reports? 15 reports? What's the incidence? What's the
| rate compared to the public and private sectors? What's the
| rate for defense contractors? Are we talking social sciences,
| hard sciences, health sciences? What's the field?
|
| "many" is just intellectually lazy here. The reality is you
| read a few stories in the media and now have written off the
| entire model of research funding.
|
| Failures (ethical or otherwise) are an everyday occurrence at
| scale, and the US research and funding model is at a scale
| unparalleled in the world.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Even if it's a few. Imagine if honest researchers start
| chasing the fraudulent results. Now you have several
| people's time wasted. If the honest researcher is junior
| (PhD or Postdoc), their career is almost certainly over.
| Worse, assume the junior researcher is dishonest or
| marginal. The incentive is to fudge things a little bit to
| keep a career. The cycle begins anew... inherent in our
| system there is positive selection (in the 'natural
| selection' sense) for dishonest researchers.
|
| This should give you pause.
|
| Without claiming that any given administration is taking
| any action with deliberateness or planning... What is even
| more counterintuitive is that if the dishonesty hits a
| certain critical point, defunding all research suddenly is
| net positive.
|
| I would also suggest you keep your ear to the ground.
| Almost every scientific discipline is in a crisis of
| reproducibility right now.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I'm skeptical that the current system is efficient at
| allocating the funds_
|
| Probably. But the solution almost certainly doesn't involve
| the federal government policing what is and isn't researched,
| discussed and taught. We had a system that worked. We're
| destroying the parts of it that worked, while retaining the
| parts that are novel. (Turning conservatives into a protected
| class, for instance--not even the CCP explicitly reserves
| seats for party members.)
| fallingknife wrote:
| Why would the people paying for the research not control
| what it can be spent on? Letting the people who spend the
| money decide is typically not a good system.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| _typically_
|
| Pure science may not be a typical case, though, because
| the people who control the funds don't really have any
| idea whether the work they are funding is ultimately
| going to turn out productive or not. The work involved is
| far from routine and basically a jump into the unknown.
|
| I get the risk of fraud and nepotism, but in some other
| situations (Bell Labs etc.), "choose very good people and
| let them improvise within certain limits of a budget"
| turned out to be very efficient. The devil is in the
| "choose very good people" detail.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| ...Why would the people paying control what it's spent
| on...?
| jasonhong wrote:
| They do control what it's spent on. There are volumes of
| compliance about how you can spend the money. For
| example, can't use the funds on food, alcohol, paying
| rent, bribing people (yes, seriously, some idiot tried it
| and then they had to make a rule about it), you have to
| fly US carriers where possible, etc.
|
| There are also reports you submit showing your progress
| and how you spent the money, to check that you are
| spending it on things you said you would.
|
| This thread (not just the person I'm replying to)
| demonstrates a lot of misconceptions about why we have
| research funding, how it works, and what the results have
| been in practice. Please, everyone, don't rely on
| stereotypes of how you think research funding works.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Ok... If it's not the most efficient way to allocate funds,
| it's now your job to design a more efficient way. Good luck
| and let us know what you come up with!
| ajross wrote:
| > I'm skeptical that the current system is efficient at
| allocating the funds
|
| I think everyone would be. There's a lot of bad science that
| gets funded. The point, though, is that you can't pick the
| good science from the bad without _DOING THE SCIENCE_.
|
| The easiest thing in the world is to sit back and pretend to
| be an expert, picking winners and losers and allocating your
| limited capital "efficiently". The linked article shows why
| that's wrong, because someone comes along to outspend you and
| you lose.
| goldchainposse wrote:
| Whether or not it's efficient isn't as much of a concern as
| if it's being gamed. Reports of growing university
| administrations, increase in the cost of an education, and
| biases in the publish-or-perish model show the old model is
| no longer _effective_.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| I guess the author is mentioning public funding to try to make
| a political point, but it does not fit the narrative, because
| publicly funded research is the norm worldwide.
|
| The glaring difference in how the US approached R&D is rather
| the way in which they manage to integrate the private sector,
| manage to convert research into products and manage to get
| funded for these rather risky private projects.
|
| Also, with regards to why researchers flocked to the US, post-
| WWII, it was for the same reason that other people were
| flocking to the US (and Canada, and Australia): the new world
| had good economic prospects.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Total? Is this a lot? "Today, U.S. universities license 3,000
| patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 other licenses to
| technology startups and existing companies"
| yubblegum wrote:
| Let's assume say a handful of key domains (as in bio-
| medicine, computing, energy, etc.) are there in a modern
| society. This gives roughly around 600 new innovations in a
| given top level domain (say biology) every year.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I think the particular method probably pales in comparison to
| the fact that the US simply had so much more money and
| resources. The UK is an island nation that lost its empire and
| was playing second fiddle.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Such a "simple" solution. Wonder why doing a PhD in the
| majority of european countries is equal to a poor monthly
| income. Just pay them more. I guess countries don't like long
| term solutions.
| Arubis wrote:
| Being the sole western industrialized nation that hadn't just had
| most of their infrastructure bombed to rubble can't have hurt.
| apercu wrote:
| Absolutely, but what did that give the United States, a 10-year
| advantage?
|
| Last time I checked, WWII ended 80 years ago.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It kicked off a feedback loop. The best scientists and
| engineers wanted to work on the projects that were 10 years
| ahead. As a result US companies were at the forefront of new
| technology and developments... attracting the next generation
| of the best scientists and engineers.
|
| This was quite robust until <group that disagrees with my
| political opinions> screwed it up for ideological reasons
| (fortunately, I guess, I can say this in a non-partisan
| manner because everybody thinks the other side blew it. My
| side is correct, though, of course).
| laughingcurve wrote:
| Schrodinger's politics
| mixermachine wrote:
| Science and progress are not a one off thing. The scientist
| are not used up after 10 years. They keep working and keep
| the advantages going. The advantage attracts even more
| intelligent people from every corner of the world.
| Permit wrote:
| Canada and Australia are smaller but surely count as
| industrialized western nations (Canada is like 9th by GDP)
| whose infrastructure was not bombed to rubble.
| klipt wrote:
| The USA's huge population and large internal free trade area
| give it better economies of scale.
| randunel wrote:
| Canada's population was 10mil, maybe less, when ww2 ended.
| someNameIG wrote:
| Here in Australia we just didn't have the population to have
| a large global influence. We had a population of around 7.5
| million in 1945, compared to the US that had about 150,000
| million.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| The US provided billions in aid and resources under the
| Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and especially Japan after the
| war. And provided billions again to Korea after the Korean War.
| Japan and South Korea obviously made the most of it with their
| massive science and technology industries in the post-war era.
| croes wrote:
| The Marshall plan's effectiveness is more of a myth
|
| https://miwi-institut.de/archives/2898
| slowking2 wrote:
| Also, being far enough from Europe that a huge amount of talent
| decided the U.S. was a better bet for getting away from the
| Nazis. And then taking a large number of former Nazi
| scientist's post-war as well.
|
| The article mentions but underrates the fact that post-war the
| British shot themselves in the foot economically.
|
| As far as I'm aware, the article is kind of wrong that there
| wasn't a successful British computing industry post war, or at
| least it's not obvious that it's eventual failure has much to
| do with differences in basic research structure. There was a
| successful British computing industry at first, and it failed a
| few decades later.
| foobarian wrote:
| And yet here we are with Arm cores everywhere you look! :-D
| slowking2 wrote:
| Fair point! That's a great technical success; I didn't
| realize Arm was British.
|
| If the main failure of British companies is that they don't
| have U.S. company market caps, it seems more off base to
| blame this on government science funding policy instead of
| something else. In almost every part of the economy, U.S.
| companies are going to be larger.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| My understanding is that the British "Arm" is just a
| patent holder now. I don't think they actually make
| anything. Companies outside the UK are the ones that
| actually make the chips licensed from the Arm designs.
| pizzalife wrote:
| Sweden was not bombed.
| randunel wrote:
| But they were aligned with the nazis until close to the very
| end. It was easier to remember back then, but people have
| mostly forgotten nowadays.
| lonelyasacloud wrote:
| Indeed, although Sweden was officially neutral, they most
| notoriously permitted German trains to roll through their
| country to Norway with soldiers and materials both during
| and after its invasion.
| dboreham wrote:
| Too many smart people doing smart stuff. Got to destroy that!
| Victory to the Idiocracy.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Soon we might need a summary of how they managed to fall from
| grace and others slowly surpassed them.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's stated as fact but what's the causative link for indirect
| cost administration being the key? If those costs were made
| direct by university labs having to compete with commercial labs
| by requiring researchers to explicitly rent facilities why would
| that break things?
|
| About the only argument I can see is transaction costs. And those
| are a factor but that incentivizes university labs because they
| have facilities for teaching as well so they can bring
| transaction costs low.
| ecshafer wrote:
| There are a couple fundamental flaws here:
|
| One is that the number one Science and Engineering powerhouse
| prior to WWII was Germany, not Britain.
|
| Two this totally neglects that the US received the lion's share
| of Scientists and Mathematicians from countries like Germany,
| Hungary, Poland etc with the encroachment of the Soviets and
| persecution of the Jewish people.
|
| While the down up approach of the US and heavy funding probably
| helped a lot. Bringing in the Von Neumanns and Erdos of the world
| couldn't have hurt.
| reubenswartz wrote:
| Unfortunately, the German example is quite relevant these days.
| We seem intent on destroying the leading system of research
| universities in the world... ;-(
| blululu wrote:
| Prior to WWII the United States was the world's leading power
| in terms of Science, Engineering and Industry - not Germany or
| the British Empire. The reason that Central European scientists
| fled to America (and not Britain) is because the United States
| had the scientific, engineering and industrial base to absorb
| them. Consider some of the major scientific breakthroughs to
| come out of the US leading up to and coming out of the war:
| Nylon, Teflon, Synthetic Rubber, Penicillin, Solid State
| Transistors, Microwave Communication, Information Theory, a
| Vaccine for Polio... These all would have happened with or
| without the war and the migration of German scientists (though
| adding John von Neumann to the mix probably helped move things
| along).
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related from same author earlier:
|
| _How the United States became a science superpower -- and how
| quickly it could crumble_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687118
| gigatexal wrote:
| And how the Trump admin is ruining it in very little time.
| zusammen wrote:
| "Indirect costs" were accepted on the theory that this would be
| used to create job security for professors who did useful work
| but were not able to secure direct funding.
|
| Spoiler alert: That job security doesn't exist anymore. A
| professor who isn't winning grants, even if tenured, is
| functionally dead. Research doesn't matter except as PR and
| teaching definitely doesn't matter; the ability to raise grants
| is the singular determinant of an academic's career.
|
| Consequently, most academics despise university overhead because
| it reduces the number of grants to go around and they get nothing
| for it.
|
| That does not, of course, mean they support Trump or Musk. Most
| do not.
| hintymad wrote:
| > Britain remained a leader in theoretical science and defense
| technology, but its socialist government economic policies led to
| its failure to commercialize wartime innovations.
|
| And the detriment of UK's auto industry, manufacturing industry,
| and etc. I really don't understand how people still fancy state-
| controlled economy.
| blululu wrote:
| >> Prior to WWII the U.S was a distant second in science and
| engineering. By the time the war was over, U.S. science and
| engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85
| years.
|
| Citation needed. The United States has been a scientific
| powerhouse for most of its history. On the eve of WWII the United
| States was the largest producer of automobiles, airplanes and
| railway trains on earth. It had largest telegraph system, the
| largest phone system, the most Radio/TV/Movie production &
| distribution or any country. It had the highest electricity
| generation. The largest petroleum production/refining capacity.
| The list goes on. This lead in production was driven by local
| innovations. Petroleum, electricity, telephones, automobiles and
| airplanes were all first pioneered in the United States during
| late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We can debate the
| causes of this but saying that the United States was a 2nd tier
| power behind the British or the Germans is demonstrably false.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| And now come back with per capita numbers.
| blululu wrote:
| A simple Google search would reveal: GDP:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334182/wwii-pre-war-
| gdp... GPD Per Capita:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334256/wwii-pre-war-
| gdp...
|
| US: 6134 UK: 5983 GER: 5544
|
| The US would be even higher were it not for the South
| bringing down the average. Not really a surprise: America has
| always been a highly educated and highly skilled country.
| casey2 wrote:
| Right from the first paragraph I know this is just nonsense that
| is only being posted because of currentpoliticalthing
|
| The US leapfroged the rest of the world in both science and
| engineering by it's civil war, this isn't disputable. It could
| only do that because of decade long tariffs that existed solely
| to protect it's nascent manufacturing industry.
|
| People have constructed so many myths about WW2 it's crazy.
|
| GDP: 1871 the US passes GB By 1900 the US economy was double GB's
| size. by 1910 they've already passed them by GDP per capita.
| INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT: Again 1870s. You can't really untie science
| from industrial output. Is there argument here that the US was
| behind scientifically because of Nobel prizes? If you narrowly
| define science as "things europeans liked to research" then I
| guess. But even by that definition Americans were discovering new
| drugs such as Actinomycin D as early as 1940, during, not after,
| WW2 and before they entered. So unless people like Waksman
| (educated in America) count as braindrain 30 years before the
| fact I don't think the argument is credible.
|
| The UK failed to mass produce penicillin. It's this industrial
| ineptitude that caused "brain drain".
| blululu wrote:
| Was it tarrifs or just a large, highly educated population with
| a unified market? The US has always been one of the leaders in
| education and scientific research on a per capita basis. Even
| in the 1770s you har people like Franklin working on cutting
| edge physics (the standard sign convention for charge is still
| flipped because of him). At some point it also just outgrew all
| the other countries in terms of size and it naturally became
| the global leader around that time.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Time for the EU to take the place of the US.
| ijidak wrote:
| > By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had
| blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years
|
| Was this written in 2030? The war ended in 1945.
|
| Just a minor nit... It was jarring to see a statement of
| questionable accuracy in the opening paragraph.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Not for long.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| It also didn't hurt that a certain European science superpower
| started purging academics based on ideology, said academics being
| more than welcome in the USA. Wait a minute...
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