[HN Gopher] U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs sin...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took
office
Author : j_maffe
Score : 411 points
Date : 2026-01-27 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| stopbulying wrote:
| > departures outnumbered new hires last year [2025] by a ratio of
| 11 to one, resulting in a net loss of 4224 STEM Ph.D.s
| mekdoonggi wrote:
| There have been a huge amount of cuts to the Veteran's
| Administration disguised. Hiring has been frozen, then people
| leave and their positions can't be filled, then they cut that
| position saying "it wasn't filled so wasn't needed".
| BrenBarn wrote:
| The scarier part is that a lot of people will see this as good
| news.
| TacoCommander wrote:
| There's a good chance they'd have been put to use strengthening
| the advertisement-dopamine-corporate control cycle that
| humanity is currently suffering under.
| zerof1l wrote:
| Why? If they instead move to EU, that's a win for EU.
| Sharlin wrote:
| GP's point is that because being anti-science is on the rise.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| It is good for EU but I belive he was pointing to these hurr
| durr emigrants bad people. Usually the same people which
| conveniently always forget that they probalby come as much
| poorer people than these ones.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Scientists tell people things they don't want to hear
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| That's an odd description
| jandrese wrote:
| Depends if your career depends on some facts not being
| true. Scientists can seem like a threat to you
| specifically if for example you need Climate Change to
| not be real. The last thing you would want is someone
| bringing evidence and analysis to that reality.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| > for example you need Climate Change to not be real
|
| Isn't this the consensus of the major world powers?
|
| Is that what these lost PhD students were studying?
| ryoshoe wrote:
| Major world powers generally agree on the reality of
| climate change, the disagreement is on how to address it
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| You know he means some US citizens who are anti- intellectual
| due to a combination of insecurities and propaganda by the
| Republican party
| esalman wrote:
| Because academia and University research is broken at best
| and leftist breeding ground at worst /s
| ActorNightly wrote:
| EU unfortunately doesn't have the economic investment in
| education like US for a lot to justify the move.
| ixtli wrote:
| I came here to see if the comments could explain to my why this
| obviously bad thing is actually good. Its somewhat comforting
| to see others worried about the implication. The fact is that
| governments (aka public funding) is really what drives the
| biggest most impactful sorts of scientific breakthroughs.
| Think: NASA spinoffs, the internet, rocketry, MRNA, etc.
|
| I know that the US has been failing to fund important things
| like Fusion for more than 40 years now but its sad and scary to
| see it halting.
| ccheney wrote:
| Is it not a good thing that these folks could do something
| more productive in the private sector?
|
| Just on your Fusion example alone:
| https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/31/every-fusion-startup-
| that-...
|
| Wouldn't it be better if companies like these had a larger
| pool of PhDs to pull from?
|
| Private sector does some things better, see Rocket Lab, Blue
| Origin, SpaceX, et al.
|
| This _is_ a good thing.
| ausbah wrote:
| citing rocket companies feels funny when most of the
| research and some non-trivial % of contracts comes (came?)
| from gov't (mostly defense) spending
| Sharlin wrote:
| Incredible false dichotomy. I don't even know where to
| start dissecting this "argument".
| kaitai wrote:
| Your phrasing "something more productive in the private
| sector" is taken from the DOGE emails to federal employees.
| Note that in this sense "productive" means "makes money for
| corporations". If your utility function is different, these
| jobs are no longer more productive.
|
| For a very concrete illustration, I know a Veterans
| Administration physician who got the DOGE emails. He's been
| underpaid by $50k-100k per year compared to private market
| rates, for the last twenty years. He is happy to take that
| discount because the mission of caring for veterans is
| something he cares about, and because he feels he can
| practice better medicine if his goal is patient outcomes
| rather than billable procedures. He also values the
| education and research priorities of the VA.
|
| It is _absolutely_ true that he would make a lot more money
| for a private provider maximizing procedures and billing.
|
| But is that what we _should_ be optimizing for as a
| society? Is that what _you_ personally aim for from your
| doctors?
| WarmWash wrote:
| I know a land lord that rents his apartment for $500/mo,
| when it's worth $2000/mo because he cares about his
| community.
|
| Did I just solve the housing crisis?
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Tell me have you thoroughly researched where all of the
| NOAA or NIH products go? The private sector has given us
| AccuWeather for the former and nothing for the latter.
|
| I rely on NOAA forecasts to stay safe a lot and no private
| company gives me the kind of volume of information about
| the weather, hydrology, and sea conditions that they do.
| Call me when the private sector maintains flood gauges on
| all the rivers where I live or weather stations on peaks or
| satellites overhead.
|
| I'm just thoroughly sick of hearing people repeat Reagan
| like he's some kind of prophet.
| notahacker wrote:
| I think your "every fusion startup that raised $100m" link
| answers that question. Fusion startups haven't been
| bottlenecked by being unable to afford to poach talent
| previously administering grant programs or working in
| government-funded plasma physics labs. Shutting the labs
| and programs down on the other hand does slow down the
| fundamental research that leads to those startups
| JohnFen wrote:
| This is not a good thing.
|
| > Is it not a good thing that these folks could do
| something more productive in the private sector?
|
| That's assuming that they could do something more
| productive in the private sector. I don't think that's true
| in a whole lot of cases. The private sector is about
| maximizing profit, but there's a whole universe of
| productive and necessary things that don't lead directly to
| profit. The private sector is terrible at doing those
| things.
|
| And, depending on what exactly we're talking about, it's
| very often the case that the private sector is much less
| efficient in terms of bang for the buck.
|
| > Wouldn't it be better if companies like these had a
| larger pool of PhDs to pull from?
|
| The pool they're pulling from isn't getting larger. It's
| getting smaller.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| I don't think this is necessarily a good thing. I'm in
| favor of the private sector, but these public sector
| research and scientific institutions also do very important
| work.
|
| Some of the most brightest and accomplished scientists out
| of academia elect to forgo a higher paying private sector
| job in order to go into the civil service and work on even
| higher impact, lower paying jobs that don't necessarily
| chase an obvious profit motive. Ask yourself why.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Really think about this claim: "private sector does some
| things better." What evidence is there of this _really_
| that isn 't anecdotal? There are so many things tossed
| around like this which sound plausible but for which I
| can't think of a definitive, conclusive, account.
|
| For example: the public sector literally send humans to the
| moon with technology vastly inferior to that which we
| currently have at our disposal. Heck, the _Soviet Union_
| put a probe on the _surface of Venus_ and sent back images.
| To me, it is not at all clear that "private sector better"
| is a foregone conclusion. At best you could make the strong
| claim that contemporary economic theory _predicts_ that
| private sector companies do better.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Private sector does some things better, see Rocket Lab,
| Blue Origin, SpaceX, et al._
|
| The private sector is good at doing more efficiently what
| the government already figured out how to do.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >Private sector does some things better, see Rocket Lab,
| Blue Origin, SpaceX, et al.
|
| All of those companies exist on the backbone of work that
| was done by government funded labs. You are just seeing the
| investments pay off.
|
| PHds aren't engineers. The whole point of a PHd is
| basically spending a whole bunch of time working on
| something, with a very slight chance that it may or may not
| work - this is not something that is compatible with a
| private sector in any means. The point is that as a
| collective, you hope that someone has a brain blast moment
| and discover something that engineers can then take and
| make viable.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| Over the long run, the benefits of private sector mostly
| accrue to the private sector.
|
| Over the long run, the benefits of the public sector mostly
| accrue to society.
| mecsred wrote:
| In the current social climate I would absolutely not trust
| public media to understand general consensus. Ask specific
| people you trust or seek out their opinions.
| pixl97 wrote:
| In mainstream media, public consensus is bought by the
| highest bidder, or the whims of the board of the company.
|
| In social media, general consensus is owned by those that
| control the best and most bots to direct the conversation.
|
| Unfortunately most people are too lazy/busy to seek out
| trusted information, and many if not most have no ability
| to understand if the answer they get should be trusted or
| not.
| mmooss wrote:
| > In social media, general consensus is owned by those
| that control the best and most bots to direct the
| conversation.
|
| Isn't it owned by the owner of the social media platform?
| Do you think Zuckerberg, Musk, etc are neutral? There is
| an enormous amount of evidence otherwise.
|
| If some bots proliferate, it's because the owners allow
| those bots to do so.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Do you think Zuckerberg, Musk, etc are neutral?
|
| I mean, why wouldn't they have the most bots?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Not everyone agress that those things are necessarily good. I
| think the Apollo program for example was a massive waste of
| money that didn't improve anything for the average person. It
| was mostly just a dick-swinging contest with the USSR to see
| who had the biggest rocket and could get people to the moon
| first.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > I think the Apollo program for example was a massive
| waste of money that didn't improve anything for the average
| person
|
| i mean, sure, that makes sense if you've never gotten on a
| plane, eaten food, used a space blanket when camping or in
| an emergency, been in an earthquake prone area or had
| hearing aids (non-exhaustive list)
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/technology/tech-transfer-
| spinoffs/going...
|
| > It was mostly just a dick-swinging contest with the USSR
| to see who had the biggest rocket and could get people to
| the moon first.
|
| just because this was the primary political goal, and i'm
| 100% in agreement with you there, it does not mean that
| there were no other benefits to humanity. sometimes,
| humanity can accidentally do a good thing for everyone
| because we're trying to beat the other guy in a race. it
| does happen, sometimes.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded in
| the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is automatically
| someone the US government should want to employ, which I don't
| think is true. Academia is a badly broken system, and many people
| with formal credentials like PhDs have wasted huge amounts of
| time and effort on producing what is ultimately low-quality
| scientific work. This is a pretty uncontroversial statement among
| people I know in academia - or who were in academia but left -
| and this should absolutely affect the degree to which federal
| government agencies are willing to hire people who have formal
| credentials like a STEM PhD.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Do you think that's what is going on here?
| sanskritical wrote:
| In my experience legitimately talented people are staying,
| and the guy whose impressive education credentials seem to
| train him mostly how to write very wordy excuses for his
| shortage of actual work product is going back home. Maybe you
| have a different experience, but my experience is something
| that seems to be echoed among a lot of people in my social
| circle.
|
| My experience is that people with talent are both driven and
| valued. Someone who might disagree with the current
| administration politically but is doing exactly what they
| want to do with their life in a role that generates
| measurable utility for the taxpayer is not packing up and
| leaving, nor losing their job. But many pieces of gristle are
| getting trimmed off the American government.
| nialv7 wrote:
| what you are saying is idiotic. people who are in demand
| can find work anywhere, they are the kind of people who
| will leave as soon as they feel their work environment has
| become even remotely uncomfortable. people who stay are
| more likely to be those who can't find job elsewhere.
| sanskritical wrote:
| I think people who will leave as soon as they feel their
| work environment has become even remotely uncomfortable
| are likely sitting in a comfortable sinecure, and it
| isn't the role of the taxpayer to provide sinecures for
| people with doctoral degrees.
|
| Government workers are meant to serve the government, and
| the government of the United States is By the People. The
| People voted for the administration and if someone can't
| work for the company because you dislike the guy running
| it, well, it sounds infantile to me. Someone so fragile
| as to not tolerate political disagreement and reasonable
| scrutiny and auditing should not be receiving a salary
| from public funds.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure it's "infantile" for people at the NIH to
| resign because they believe their work is being censored
| for conflict with the administration's preferred
| pseudoscience.
|
| Could you sound any more like a Lysenko propagandist in
| the USSR if you tried?
| toyg wrote:
| Your guy has armed goons with "absolute immunity"
| literally executing people in the streets, after
| threatening to invade neighbours and allies, appointing
| shockingly-unqualified loyalists at the very top of
| national institutions, and generally gutting the rule of
| law. It's a bit past "tolerating political disagreement",
| man.
| giardini wrote:
| Well, that went south quickly!
|
| Glad to hear a British viewpoint now and then, but of
| course any problems stateside will be handled and voted
| on by Americans rather than Brits. Unless possibly you
| have dual citizenship (Brit & USA) perhaps?
|
| FWIW Britain has plenty of history of what you term
|
| "armed goons with "absolute immunity" literally executing
| people in the streets, after threatening to invade
| neighbours and allies, appointing shockingly-unqualified
| loyalists at the very top of national institutions, and
| generally gutting the rule of law."
|
| You Brits almost have a monopoly on tyranny of various
| forms, having gone through most of them in bloody civil
| wars yourself. Hardly a model to follow, n'est-ce pa?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| This position is idiotic, more detrimental to the United
| States than the government over employing people, and
| frankly un-American according to how we understood what
| serves America best pre-Trump.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the
| _Un...
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| I'm a phd who used to be in civil service.
|
| What you write here is certainly the goal, and I had a
| lot of colleagues who agreed with you. I thought it was
| bogus then, and I think it's bogus now.
|
| Also people quit jobs all the time because of the boss.
| Usually it's the direct one, but not always, and as
| above, so below.
|
| > reasonable scrutiny and auditing
|
| It's been well over a decade since I left, and I'm sure
| it's gotten worse for those who stayed, but: lol. lmao.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| How can your limited experience make any claims about the
| government workforce as a whole.
|
| It requires a decent amount of time to understand if
| someone is talented and that talent is being used to better
| their job.
|
| >but is doing exactly what they want to do with their life
| in a role that generates measurable utility for the
| taxpayer is not packing up and leaving
|
| How would you know? Some people have very strong
| convictions and as another comment stated if a person is
| talented it increases the chances they could find another
| job similar to their desired work
| sdenton4 wrote:
| This doesn't match my experience at all.
|
| Mid last year I helped run a workshop on AI explicitly for
| laid off federal science workers. The people involved were
| clearly extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, passionate
| about their research areas, and harboring an immense amount
| of institutional knowledge. They showed great curiosity and
| adaptability in the workshop. It was obvious that they were
| a set of very bad fires.
| dtdynasty wrote:
| Why wouldn't stem PhDs follow some bell curve of quality? I'm
| sure many PhDs that are leaving don't contribute but some of
| them do. I personally don't see a reason for it to be skewed
| for only PhDs which don't contribute to leave.
| recursive wrote:
| These things are not in conflict. It's possible that PhD
| quality has a regular distribution, and that most of them
| aren't contributing much.
| dtdynasty wrote:
| I agree with this. I guess you already believe they follow
| a bell curve.Then from your former comment you also believe
| it's worth it to lose many PhDs that don't contribute to
| also lose the few that do.
|
| I guess the conflict is my value judgement that it's good
| to keep PhDs that don't contribute if it allows US to keep
| the ones that do contribute. I believe so for 2 reasons.
|
| - Distinguishing between contributors and non contributors
| at scale is difficult.
|
| - the value of research can be large from a few
| contributors.
| Retric wrote:
| That's a straw man argument. Losing 10 people becomes a
| question of their individual qualifications, losing 10,000
| people and this is no longer about individuals.
|
| Some of the people who left where underperforming but a
| significant percentage where extremely underpaid while
| providing extreme value to average Americans.
| moduspol wrote:
| The number seems arbitrary. Maybe we should be subsidizing
| until we have 100,000 more.
|
| I'm always skeptical when something is presumed to be a
| universal good in a way that's unfalsifiable. What metrics
| would you expect to see if we had too many STEM PhDs? What
| metrics can we expect to improve if we had more of them?
| ixtli wrote:
| I think your comment is more a refutation of the top level
| than the person you're responding to. I think people are
| right to assume there is already a serious throughput issue
| with scientific research, especially so-called "basic"
| research in the US and seeing a mass exodus from the
| government is troubling because public funding is what,
| historically, generates the big breakthroughs.
|
| What the person you're replying to was likely trying to say
| is that once you get into this size of layoffs its no
| longer about the individuals and their performances and a
| claim that all 10k of them are on one side of a theoretical
| "bell curve" (which btw i havent seen evidence can actually
| be measured) is big and needs evidence.
| tmp10423288442 wrote:
| > public funding is what, historically, generates the big
| breakthroughs
|
| Without an opinion on the rest of this, public funding in
| the US doesn't produce big breakthroughs from scientists
| employed by the government, but rather by funding
| university research.
|
| It appears that, after the administration canceling a
| significant proportion of grants in 2025, that science
| funding has largely been maintained or increased from
| pre-2025 levels for 2026, although how the 2026 funding
| gets spent, and whether it is all spent, is an open
| question.
| quietsegfault wrote:
| You're confusing two different questions. 'Should we have
| more STEM PhDs in government?' is a reasonable policy
| debate. 'Is losing 10,000 STEM PhDs in weeks a problem?'
| has a clearer answer... yes, because institutional
| knowledge doesn't rebuild quickly. Also, there's no
| evidence this was performance-based attrition. Lastly,
| recruitment becomes harder after mass departures signal
| instability.
|
| The burden isn't on critics to prove some theoretical
| optimal number. The burden is on defenders of this exodus
| to show it improved government technical capacity rather
| than hurt it.
| moduspol wrote:
| I disagree--we're all paying for it, so it should be
| justified regardless.
|
| And I don't need an optimal number. But the common
| refrain is essentially that more is always better, and
| fewer means we're losing our standing in the world.
| Always.
|
| Maybe keeping a lot of them but shedding some percentage
| is actually more optimal. But I'm open to being wrong.
| That's why I'm asking for metrics.
| Retric wrote:
| The US government operates with such a huge debt that we
| aren't paying for these things. Instead we are paying for
| the long term effects of such spending.
|
| Cutting 10k scientists could therefore result in
| increased taxes without anyone ever seeing any savings.
| Or it could result in net gain from 1$ all the way up to
| what their cost * interest in the debt.
|
| Therefore there's no obvious side who takes the default
| win here. Instead you need actual well supported
| arguments.
| quietsegfault wrote:
| If this was intentional workforce reduction, then the
| agencies affected should show improved efficiency or
| output with fewer people. We should see faster regulatory
| reviews, better grant decisions, stronger technical
| evaluations, just with leaner teams.
|
| Instead, what we're likely to see is degraded capacity,
| slower timelines, and reduced technical oversight. If
| that happens, will you acknowledge this was a mistake? Or
| will any negative outcome just get blamed on the
| remaining employees?
| biophysboy wrote:
| One metric you could use is how often publications are
| mentioned by patents, and how often those patents lead to
| economic value. By this metric, it is valuable.
|
| The number of PhDs we have is currently too many given the
| amount of money we have for project grants. But there is no
| evidence that the money we allocate to research is too
| large. If anything, you could argue the opposite.
|
| I would be delighted if the private market funded basic
| research - the seed ideas that lead to patents.
| Retric wrote:
| It's a separate question not arbitrary. How many PHD's the
| government should employ is debatable, but saying we should
| have fewer such people says nothing about who was let go.
|
| It's always tempting to say 'This was a good decision
| therefore all the consequences are good' but in the real
| world good and bad decisions will have both positive and
| negative consequences. Understanding individual
| consequences is therefore largely separated from the
| overall question of should we do X. However in politics
| nobody wants to admit any issues with what they did so they
| try and smokescreen secondary effects as universally
| beneficial/harmful.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| What's the correct level of STEM PhD employment in the
| government? Maybe those levels were way too high. But on a
| different note, we can't tell from the article what normal
| fluctuations look like. It only shows 2024 as the baseline,
| but ideally we'd look at a larger window than that as well as
| look at the percentage rather than nominal figures.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| I think you're saying "how do we know this isn't the normal
| amount of Phd people who leave every year/administration
|
| While we don't have PhD numbers the Trump administration
| fired a large amount of people so no matter some portion of
| those had Phds therefore it must be higher than the
| previous administration
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "Science's analysis found that reductions in force, or
| RIFs, accounted for relatively few departures in 2025.
| Only at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
| where 16% of the 519 STEM Ph.D.s who left last year got
| pink RIF slips, did the percentage exceed 6%, and some
| agencies reported no STEM Ph.D. RIFs in 2025."
| notahacker wrote:
| One would also have to consider the calibre of the
| individuals hired to replace them, or not, and whether
| functions such as the National Science Foundation add more or
| less value to the government than functions the government
| has chosen to increase its spending on...
| Retric wrote:
| > Add more or less value to the government than functions
| the government has chosen
|
| Talking about average government spending isn't a
| reasonable argument because you can only spend money once.
| If these people cost ~1B/year you aren't paying for 100B in
| spending by cutting them. Instead you get to add exactly 1B
| in government spending and thus the yardstick is the least
| efficient billion your paying out vs keeping these people.
| ixtli wrote:
| It sounds like you're saying that this is a step in the
| direction of "fixing" academia. I don't see any evidence of
| that, all i see is fewer scientists receiving decreasing
| funding in a state where weve already been slashing basic
| research investment for generations. Also, there is no evidence
| that the ones that are leaving are the least productive.
| Intuitively it's likely the opposite: the ones who have the
| most potential will find work elsewhere and will be the first
| to leave.
|
| EDIT: I would also like to say that i have never seen evidence
| that we can measure the performance of 10k PhDs in a single
| dimension at all. So a claim that this could be good for
| scientific research and development seems unprovable at best.
| sheikhnbake wrote:
| It also flies in the face of China's currently accelerating
| pace of research and breakthroughs by producing insane
| numbers of STEM majors and PhDs
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| China is famous for low-quality research and bad papers,
| which is exactly what you'd expect from a system that
| grants an expanded number of formal credentials to people
| who aren't actually doing good scientific research.
| roughly wrote:
| China was famous for low-quality products as well.
| layer8 wrote:
| While there have been substantial improvements, it still
| deserves its fame.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Be that as it may, China also has persistent threat
| actors outfoxing American cybersecurity in the form of
| _Salt Typhoon_. The cards are on the table, and the US is
| already undoubtedly losing several fronts of asymmetrical
| warfare.
| ixtli wrote:
| I have a friend who, to explain it simply, worked medium
| high up in the CIA for 8-12 years during Bush and Obama.
| The only time he gets serious about talking about his
| time there is on this topic. Chinas cyber security is,
| according to him, light years ahead of the US to the
| point where its embarrassing.
| Zigurd wrote:
| If I understand Salt Typhoon correctly it's a
| masterpiece. The descriptions I've seen indicate that
| they penetrated lawful intercept. Lawful intercept
| operates outside network operators network management
| systems because it was designed not to trust the network
| operators. I am skeptical of claims that Salt Typhoon has
| been eliminated from US networks. Any such implicitly
| claim to detect lawful intercept traffic and ensure it
| isn't nefarious, which traffic that system is designed to
| hide.
| ixtli wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I think well meaning people in the west are looking for a
| silver lining and in the process overcomplicating a rather
| simple issue: the US government is cutting spending
| everywhere while its electorate demands even deeper cuts.
| The money has dried up and people are leaving.
|
| (One of my best friends was a nuclear medicine phd who left
| his cancer research lab after covid to work at a VoiP
| company, so i too have anecdotes)
| sheikhnbake wrote:
| Sigh.
|
| The US is in a weird spot. The electorate does not
| generally want education and research cut.
|
| Republicans here have convinced their base that education
| and the educated are bad, which has fed their desire to
| cut academic funding and research at all levels.
|
| That is to say, the federal government doesn't have a
| popular mandate to do any of this. They simply hold all
| levers of power through a slim majority of the voting
| populace.
| krona wrote:
| Which breakthroughs, specifically? There are no Chinese
| institutions pumping out nobel prizes. Zero.
| triceratops wrote:
| 10 years ago were no Chinese companies pumping out world-
| class cars either. But here we are.
| krona wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Geely owns Volvo and IIRC a significant portion of Volvos
| are Chinese made now.
|
| There's a number of companies or brands that are now
| Chinese owned. China knows that home grown brands (like
| Geely) don't work on an international stage, so they buy
| well known brands like Volvo.
|
| It's a bit of a silent behind the scenes takeover but I'd
| say that China is now seriously making competitive cars.
| If you can follow the brands and notice.
| kelipso wrote:
| Lol, the fully homegrown BYD is destroying Tesla
| everywhere outside the US where it's basically banned and
| you're taking about Geely and Volvo and behind the
| scenes. It's all out there on the stage.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I don't really give a shit about Tesla though. Or BYD for
| that matter.
|
| By my eye, Volvo / Geely cars are the most impressive.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news/nature-index-
| resear...
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| Edit: Oh, that's old. In 2024 Chinese institutions only
| made up 7 of the top 10 most productive research centers
| but in 2025 they are account for 8/10:
| https://www.natureasia.com/en/info/press-
| releases/detail/911...
| krona wrote:
| That's a volume based index, not impact, thus reinforcing
| my point.
| sheikhnbake wrote:
| Idk man, i dont keep a list of China's breakthroughs
| handy. You can find the same results on google that I
| can.
|
| And I wasn't aware that breakthroughs needed to be nobel
| laureate worthy at a minimum to still be considered
| breakthroughs.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| I'm not claiming that this is a step in the direction of
| fixing academia; I'm claiming that, because academia is
| currently broken, we shouldn't assume that the ~10k people
| who got PhDs under the current system are people doing
| actually-valuable work for the federal government and
| ultimately the American people.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| Knowing current administration anti-science approach to
| things like climate and health, I wouldn't be all at
| surprised if many of those who left academia were ones
| producing quality work that just didn't align with Trump
| admin's ideology.
| michelsedgh wrote:
| the unscientific stuff was actually past administrations
| which told us cheetos is more healthy than eggs and meat
| lol
| clutchdude wrote:
| Turns out, if we feed data in and query it in the right
| way, we can come to charts that allow bad conclusions
| just like any other.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/16/lucky-charms-
| healthie...
| yesb wrote:
| If anyone is curious, as I was, where this misinformation
| came from: it appears to be a criticism of the Food
| Compass rating system from Tufts University. The
| connection to "past administrations" seems to be added by
| the person I'm replying to. They've also swapped Cheerios
| with Cheetos.
|
| >On social media, I have seen graphics showing certain
| breakfast cereals scoring higher than eggs, cheese, or
| meat. Did Tufts create these graphics?
|
| >No. Food Compass works very well, on average, across
| thousands of food and beverage products. But, when this
| number and diversity of products are scored, there are
| always some exceptions. These graphs were created by
| others to show these exceptions, rather than to show the
| overall performance of Food Compass and the many other
| foods for which Food Compass works well. But, as
| objective scientists, we accept constructive criticism
| and are using this to further improve Food Compass. We
| are working on an updated version now - see our versions
| page for more information.
|
| https://sites.tufts.edu/foodcompass/
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00381-y.epdf
| fasbiner wrote:
| I suspect you're right, but what we are and are not
| surprised by is self-referential rather than evidentiary.
|
| But are we supposed to be content with not being given
| enough information to make a meaningful differentiation
| between people with PhDs in human resources and
| $IDENTITY-studies vs PhDs in organic chemistry and
| climatology?
|
| When there's hostility towards discernment, it makes me
| feel like the two political strains are working together
| to use a one-two punch of credentialism and anti-
| intellectualism to erode empirical investigation into
| reality.
| throwaway2056 wrote:
| > 'm not claiming that this is a step in the direction of
| fixing academia; I'm claiming that, because academia is
| currently broken, we shouldn't assume that the
|
| Why?
|
| If you go that far then
|
| - senate
|
| - scotus
|
| - violence
|
| - SV
|
| - tech bros
|
| - lies about AI
|
| What is not broken.
|
| The idea of academia is it is an investment. Look at
| internet, DoE, Genome, vaccines - a lot from academia.
| Companies barely do that.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Indeed. You're far more likely to get sensible policy
| opinions from a STEM PhD who knows what science is than
| from sleazy opportunist politicians, investors, and PR
| people.
|
| You might even say that the opportunists dislike STEM
| because it gets in the way of their opportunism.
| checker659 wrote:
| Would you have said the same for folks doing NLP circa
| 2015?
| fsdfasdsfadfasd wrote:
| these folks were already associated with FAANG. Most of
| deep learning progress comes from industry funding, not
| academia
| ReptileMan wrote:
| People start being inventive when tight on resources, so a
| bit of evolutionary pressure is not a bad thing.
| yobbo wrote:
| You are assuming there is meaningful work for them in the
| federal government. There might be more productive work for
| them in industry. Their contribution to the workforce could
| put pressure on inflated salaries, if that is the case.
|
| If their credentials exceed their defacto responsibilities in
| the government, they might be blocking someone else from
| being promoted or otherwise "growing" or whatever.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Academia may be broken, but a lot of bright students still
| pursue PhDs and it's better to have them in your pool of
| candidates rather than not.
| imglorp wrote:
| Can we agree academia is the worst system, except for all the
| others?
|
| In the last century, the US led so many tech fields because of
| both academic and corporate research and the people to do it.
| Let's fix that system if needed and keep it well stocked.
|
| The alternative is ignorance, leading to unskilled industries
| and an easily misled electorate.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| Wouldn't an easily misled electorate benefit the political
| party that lies the most?
| imglorp wrote:
| That is kind of my point. That party has been attacking the
| education system in all forms for decades (imo) for exactly
| that reason. They have razed everything from school lunches
| to loan programs. This affects everyone.
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| We have definitive proof of that viz a vis, trump and his
| idiot magats.
| ixtli wrote:
| 10k PhDs lost isn't a step in the direction of fixing
| anything, though. There is little to no evidence that the
| people leaving aren't the _top_ performers, let alone the
| bottom.
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| > There is little to no evidence that the people leaving
| aren't the top performers, let alone the bottom.
|
| According to the article, the majority of the losses were
| voluntary (people quitting or accepting buyout offers) and
| not people who were directly laid-off.
|
| While this isn't direct evidence of where these people sit
| on the spectrum from top to bottom performers, my anecdotal
| life experience suggests that when losses like this are
| voluntary its far more likely they are top performers who
| have plenty of options elsewhere (either in the private
| sector, or in other governments).
|
| Also (and also anecdotally) this brain-drain doesn't just
| apply to direct government workers. I know of several
| people who worked in (and in some cases headed up)
| prestigious university research labs in the US who have
| left in the last year after massive funding cuts. Most of
| them were immigrants who went back to universities in their
| country of origin, some after having been here for decades.
| josephg wrote:
| At least amongst my circles, that seems so obvious. I
| don't know what things are actually like on the ground.
| But from here in Australia, the subtext of all the ICE
| news is that foreigners are no longer welcome in the US.
| And that America is becoming an authoritarian, fascist
| state.
|
| Of course I don't want to visit the US. There's no way
| I'd want to move there right now.
|
| I know of multiple US run conferences which are taking
| place in Europe this year. Too many attendees wouldn't
| come if they were hosted in the US.
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| > At least amongst my circles, that seems so obvious
|
| Blindingly obvious.
|
| The long-term (very likely permanent in many cases)
| damage being done to America by the Trump administration
| through brain-drain, weakening of our own economy, and
| causing the entire rest of the world to (rightfully)
| distrust us as a reliable ally and/or trading partner is
| incalculable.
|
| And it is all pure unforced error driven by a malignant
| narcissist bent on retribution who is also seemingly
| being used by a few different actors with their own
| individual axes to grind as he slips into dementia.
|
| > But from here in Australia, the subtext of all the ICE
| news is that foreigners are no longer welcome in the US.
| And that America is becoming an authoritarian, fascist
| state.
|
| This is also how it feels in the US. (And it isn't only
| foreigners -- the message is also that "the wrong kind"
| of American citizens are also no longer welcome in the
| US)
| thinkcontext wrote:
| There's reason to suspect that the one's leaving are more
| likely to be top performers. First, top performers are the
| most likely to be able to find another job easily so they
| would take the voluntary buyout or just leave when things
| get crazy. Also, some of the DOGE cuts targeted
| probationary employees which include those that have
| recently been promoted or recently hired, both are classes
| of employee that the department explicitly wanted to keep.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Academia critics usually think it was pretty great until the
| last 3-5 decades.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| Do you believe that 100% of the people who left were useless?
| thrance wrote:
| Usually, when a system is broken, the correct course of action
| is to fix it. Not destroy it utterly.
| quietsegfault wrote:
| The problem with this framing is that it treats a mass exodus
| as if it were selective pruning. Losing 10,000+ STEM PhDs in
| weeks isn't a quality filter. We're hemorrhaging institutional
| capacity. We lose researchers who understand decade-long
| datasets, technical experts who can evaluate contractor claims,
| and people who can actually critique scientific literature when
| making policy decisions.
|
| Where's the evidence these specific 10k were the low
| performers? The more likely scenario is that better performers
| left because they have options, while weaker performers stayed.
| If the issue is quality, you'd want systematic performance
| review, not mass departure driven by factors unrelated to
| competence.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| hmm, I was thinking >The implicit assumption that this is a bad
| thing is grounded in the assumption
|
| that in a large enough set of something there should be
| considered to be a normal distribution of high quality, medium
| quality and lower quality members in the set, unless one can
| show the distribution is biased in some way.
| morelandjs wrote:
| The tail of the distribution justifies the entire distribution.
| I agree that a large percentage of PhD research is
| inconsequential, but a small percentage is massively
| consequential. It's ok to whiff on a thousand STEM PhDs if you
| pick up one Andrej Karpathy (for example).
| ixtli wrote:
| People have really messed up views about hiring in general. I
| wish more people understood what you are saying here.
| cbb330 wrote:
| The US doesn't have enough money to fund the entire
| distribution
|
| And as a tax payer I prefer discretionary spending for high
| performers.
| titzer wrote:
| > for high performers.
|
| Like $40k bonuses for ICE agents. Incidentally, $40k is
| about the stipend for a typical PhD student. I'll take a
| smart student doing nothing but eating food and digesting
| theorems over the absolute chaos that is being funded by
| our tax dollars.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| Maybe this is true for academic institutions granting the
| PhDs (although even this I am skeptical of, training a PhD
| costs a lot in terms of time, money, and human effort). But
| that doesn't mean it implies that the federal government
| needs to employ a thousand STEM PhDs just to get someone like
| Karpathy - indeed, Andrej Karpathy does not work for the
| federal government! He made his name working in the private
| sector!
| gopher_space wrote:
| The number of people capable of identifying potentially
| consequential research is smaller than the number of people
| performing consequential research. And they're all busy with
| their own projects.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| Maybe, let's see if AI overall is a net positive or net
| negative to the US overall. If AI turns out to be a net
| negative (which seems likely) maybe we don't want this type
| of AI research being funded by taxpayers.
| clutchdude wrote:
| Picking only the tail ends of the distribution also tells me
| you don't understand how the bulk of progress is made.
|
| It isn't always Eureka moments but also a slow grinding away
| at assumptions to confirmations.
| iammjm wrote:
| Ahh yes, clearly any government would greatly benefit by having
| way fewer highly educated conscientious people working for them
| /s
| sdenton4 wrote:
| We should round up and reeducate people with glasses. /s
| giardini wrote:
| Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B
| tzs wrote:
| I fail to see how any of that is relevant to what the article
| is about, which is people who were already employed by the
| government leaving.
| malfist wrote:
| You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because
| some PhD students make "low quality science" doesn't mean we
| end academia. After all, who is going to do the high quality
| science if you get rid of all the scientists?
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Lots of scientists work in industry. Look at AI, rocketry,
| semiconductors, drug design, robotics, anything related to
| manufacturing. Academics are in the minority in these fields.
| You could eliminate all such jobs and there'd be plenty of
| science being done.
| malfist wrote:
| That's applied science. You don't have companies doing
| basic research because it isn't immediately profitable. You
| have to do both, basic research to learn things, and
| applied science to utilize it and make it commercially
| valuable.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Peter Gregory reincarnated.
| foxyv wrote:
| You're kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater here.
| Sure, some PhDs are in underwater basket weaving and barely
| warranting the title. However, most PhDs are extremely
| valuable. They are pushing the boundaries of our knowledge to
| improve society.
|
| Some part of the hatred for the current academic system stems
| from legitimate concerns about how it operates. However, I
| think this hate is mostly driven by rampant anti-
| intellectualism. Fueled in part by pseudo scientific scammers
| trying to sell you supplements on TikTok and religious
| demagogues.
| giardini wrote:
| foxyv says _" most PhDs are extremely valuable"_
|
| Can you defend this statement?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Saying "oh these are just the bad STEM PhDs" seems like a
| ridiculous exercise in sour graping.
| airstrike wrote:
| No, the implicit assumption is that losing these 10k PhDs is
| worse than not losing them.
| biophysboy wrote:
| People have tabulated the value of the academic pipeline, from
| grant to paper to patent to stock valuation. It is overall very
| valuable, even if you grant the very real issues with our
| hyper-competitive grant system.
|
| This intellectual capital is valuable, despite whatever the
| latest populist memes about professors claim.
| atonse wrote:
| You may be right in the general sentiment that not everyone
| with a PhD is a desirable candidate, but even if half of them
| were, that would be 5,000 fewer and that isn't insignificant,
| especially in STEM fields.
| paulpauper wrote:
| 10k PhDs would mean 10k dissertations. I thought the popular
| narrative is that finding new knowledge has become too hard or
| much harder than in the past, so how are these grad students
| finding stuff that is new? Are these dissertations extremely
| incremental or just repackaging/regurgitating stuff?
| cbsmith wrote:
| I have yet to hear a criticism of academia where it sounds like
| we're better disproportionately losing people with PhDs than
| without them, particularly since most of those people got their
| PhDs quite a while ago.
|
| PhDs seem to be quite employable by private industry, where
| competency is still valued.
| gizzlon wrote:
| > The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded
| in the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is
| automatically someone the US government should want to employ
|
| No, not really? That would be true if we were talking about
| hiring anyone with a STEM PhD. Or 1 random person.
|
| In this case we have people leaving, and it's a group. So it's
| more like: _The assumption that 10k PhD 's, that we saw fit to
| hire in the first place, as a collective, are worth the cost_.
|
| Seems likely that they are: The cost is low, let's say $2
| billion per year? For reference, Trumps Big Bill includes $300
| billion in new defense spending and " _over a ten-year period
| is estimated to add roughly $3 trillion to the national debt
| and to cut approximately $4.46 trillion in tax revenue_ ".
|
| Also, let's say there were too many, and you should get rid of
| 10 000 of them. I doubt the guy who keeps rambling for 1 and a
| half hour [1] and keeps getting "Greenland" and "Iceland" mixed
| up, is going to do a good job with it.
|
| 1: Seriously, I _dare_ you to try to watch it, I tried. At
| least hes "draining the swamp" /s
| https://www.youtube.com/live/qo2-q4AFh_g?si=Hwu3MSXouOfEfJCa...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Most PhDs don't move the needle because the point of a PhD is
| to learn how to do research, not to produce ground-breakingly
| original work that reinvents the entire scientific order.
|
| That's orthogonal to domain expertise and general ability.
|
| If you can survive a PhD there's an adequate chance you know
| more about your subject than an undergrad and are more capable
| of focused independent work.
|
| That's what employers are buying. Which is why STEM PhDs still
| get more attention from the private sector than generic mass-
| produced undergrads.
| epistasis wrote:
| > The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded
| in the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is
| automatically someone the US government should want to employ,
|
| No, you're making a completely illogical jump there, that is
| absolutely not assumed in any way.
|
| The assumption, if there is one, is that the position that the
| work PhD was doing in the government served the public good,
| more than they were being paid.
|
| US Government science positions are _not_ academia, so your
| second sentence does not even apply to this! Unless your
| assumption is that if the person was trained with science that
| did little then their training can not be applied to anything
| that is worthwhile, which is an obviously false assumption.
|
| Arguments with these sorts of gaping logical holes are the only
| defenses I ever see of cutting these positions. I have searched
| hard, but never found a defense that bothered to even base
| itself in relevant facts, and connect through with a logically
| sound argument.
|
| Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it sure is
| damning when in a democracy there's not even a fig leaf of an
| intellectually sound argument backing a drastic and massive
| change in policy.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >Academia is a badly broken system,
|
| Why do you feel like you can state this like its fact?
|
| Just to save you energy, state that you are conservative first
| before writing fan fiction fantasy like that, because it will
| save people a lot of time assuming that you are speaking some
| sort of facts.
| retired wrote:
| We are seeing the same in The Netherlands:
|
| https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/fewer-phd-positions-and-...
|
| https://www.sciencelink.net/features/its-not-just-about-mone...
| ixtli wrote:
| I believe the opposite is happening in China. I saw an article
| the other day ( https://fortune.com/2026/01/14/china-
| graduates-1-3-million-e... ) that showed how the amount of
| engineers being produced there is orders of magnitude greater
| than the US. Way above what you'd expect given the different
| sizes of population. Now, i realize an engineer isn't the same
| as a PhD but i think we're seeing a dramatic brain drain
| happening in the west.
| amelius wrote:
| It is because China has a meritocratic system.
| ixtli wrote:
| Maybe. I would like to think that is true but i don't have
| much evidence.
|
| I think what we can see provably is that China is investing
| in the development of STEM contributors at the primary
| school level through advanced degrees and the central
| government is directing the economy to spend huge amounts
| on the work that they do.
| weirdmantis69 wrote:
| I'm very curious about this because even tho we need to
| preserve democracy, some elements of meritocracy also seem
| needed. Obviously as Xi's latest purges show, there is some
| politics to it as well, but China does seem to do a fairly
| good job of meritocracy in the bureaucracy.
| retired wrote:
| I'm not a PhD, just an engineer and I moved out of The
| Netherlands. It was no longer economical feasible to live
| there. I am very pessimistic about the future Western Europe.
| Right now it offers the one of the best QoL in the world for
| the average worker but who knows for how long. With the
| current brain and wealth drain there will no longer be enough
| people to support the social system.
| ixtli wrote:
| Sorry to hear you got priced out :( Unfortunately i am also
| quite pessimistic about the future of europe and the us,
| too.
| retired wrote:
| The Netherlands is taking action against the brain drain
| by rapidly importing highly skilled migrants through
| various tax lowering schemes in the first five years of
| living here.
|
| However plenty of those people leave after that period.
| Especially with the upcoming 36% unrealized capital gains
| tax on all your savings and investments.
|
| Feels a bit like ISPs giving discounts to new customers
| only.
| andriesm wrote:
| On _unrealized_ gains, wait, what??
| retired wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Say you have EUR80k in investments. Markets go up, in one
| year time your investments are worth EUR90k. You did not
| sell.
|
| That means you had EUR10k in unrealized capital gains.
| Subtract the EUR1800 per person threshold. EUR8200, 36%
| tax is EUR2952 tax to be paid at the start of the year.
|
| Losses give you tax credits redeemable against future
| capital gains (not against income tax from employment)
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Assuming you're not going to somehow avoid paying your
| tax when you do eventually liquidate, paying year to year
| is not that crazy.
|
| Paying tax on money you make because you already have
| money is far better than playing tax on your time you
| sold for salary.
| kcb wrote:
| How does that even work? What does it apply to? Say I own
| a 100% share in a business, each year does the government
| appraise it and pretty much require me to divest a
| portion of it to pay the tax?
|
| Unrealized capital gains taxes are crazy all in an effort
| to own the rich or something. Meanwhile the people
| they're perceived as targeting have all the resources to
| avoid it.
| retired wrote:
| Yes, you are supposed to either sell part of the stocks
| to cover the yearly tax or you need to dip into your
| savings account to find money to cover the tax.
|
| I don't know about non-publicly listed companies, I
| assume you indeed need to appraise yearly.
|
| The rich don't pay these taxes as the unrealised capital
| gains tax is only for private individuals, not companies.
| The rich have their assets in companies / shells.
| prewett wrote:
| A 36% tax?! Nobody's going to invest in that environment,
| since the taxes will really sap your effective
| compounding rate. That's a great way to push all your
| finance people out of the country.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Why is this shocking? Surely if you hadn't grown up with
| the very technical idea of unrealized gains, this would
| seem totally normal. The surprising thing is that we let
| ourselves be convinced in the past that making money with
| money should be tax advantaged compared to making money
| with labor.
|
| Unrealized gains are gains.
| prewett wrote:
| Do you have to pay tax on unrealized gains with realized
| money? A classic problem with exercising employee stock
| options and holding the stock is that you have a tax
| event on the unrealized gain, but if the stock drops
| substantially, you still owe the tax money on the
| unrealized gain, but you cannot sell the stock for enough
| to pay for it. This happened to a lot of people around
| 2001.
|
| Paying for unrealized gains with realized money is not a
| situation anyone want to be in.
| mjuarez wrote:
| This is misleading. It's actually taxing 36% of _assumed
| gains_ of say 5% on all assets. So if you have $1M in
| savings, you'll end up paying 1.8% or $18K/annum,
| regardless of the actual investment return. I can see it
| would be painful during down years, but most of the time
| it would be ok.
| retired wrote:
| That is the current system. In the new system it will be
| 36% on all capital gains, no more assumed gains. And an
| EUR1800 a year tax-free threshold.
|
| Also it's a bit more, right now you are looking at 36% on
| 6% or 2.16% per year with a EUR59k threshold. So a bit
| over EUR20k a year on that EUR1M.
| tasuki wrote:
| Actually that makes more sense? If you lose money on your
| investments, I suppose you can write it off next time?
| retired wrote:
| You can write it off against future capital gains, but
| not against income tax from employment. So if the market
| is down a few years, you gain a lot of tax credits and
| you pray that the government doesn't get rid of those
| credits in the mean time.
| tasuki wrote:
| No, that's not ok.
|
| Many years ago, a friend of mine in the Netherlands had
| the same job as another guy, earning the same money, my
| friend being extremely thrifty, the other guy splurging.
| When they both found themselves out of a job at the same
| time, my friend got no support from the government as he
| had savings, while the other guy started getting a very
| generous allowance.
|
| This goes directly against all that is reasonable. This
| is directly discouraging financial responsibility. My
| friend is thrifty just for the sake of it, he _knows_ it
| 's not in his interest. But he gets the short end.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Same situation in the UK. Even a modest amount of savings
| (a few months of your salary) is enough to disqualify you
| from the majority of benefits, childcare etc.
| retired wrote:
| Correct. If you go over EUR38.478 in savings, you
| immediately lose your renters benefit. No taper, just a
| hard drop-off. You can lose up to EUR5.000 in renters
| benefit a year.
|
| A legal tax avoidance is to just buy a EUR1000 TV if you
| are near the limit. Yes that is as crazy as it sounds but
| people do it.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| > 36% unrealized capital gains tax
|
| This sounds like the Netherlands speed running their way
| out of investments. If a country I was living in proposed
| this, I would be leaving ASAP, or getting some heavy
| financial engineering done.
| johanyc wrote:
| > brain drain
|
| Where are they draining to?
| copperx wrote:
| But why did you left if you had a great QoL?
| retired wrote:
| Because I was able to get a better QoL elsewhere in the
| EU.
|
| The average worker in The Netherlands has one of the best
| QoL compared to average workers in other countries. But
| the Dutch income leveling and benefit system makes it so
| a high earner doesn't have a significantly better QoL.
| Someone earning EUR30k has roughly the same spending
| power as someone earning EUR50k. (edit: net income after
| tax and benefits is EUR42k versus EUR47k for those two
| incomes but the person earning EUR30k has access to
| cheaper government housing)
|
| In other countries, earning more gives you a better QoL.
| garte wrote:
| It gives you more things to buy, doesn't it? That does
| not necessarily translate to a better life.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| The Netherlands had effectively full employment until a few
| years ago, last I checked.
|
| Unless things got dramatically worse in the past 3 or so
| years, I think you are massively overreacting.
|
| I happen to have a few personal friends that live there,
| for that matter.
| retired wrote:
| I left mainly because of housing prices, the difficulty
| of being a freelancer, the 49.5% income tax after EUR78k,
| the 36% unrealized capital gains tax and just everything
| in life like supermarkets or public transport being so
| much more expensive than other European countries.
|
| I took a big pay cut moving to Southern Europe, but post-
| tax I earn the same and everything is just so much
| cheaper. I honestly have a significant better life here.
| Good weather too.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| So you're not retired? Confusing username to pick if so.
| badpun wrote:
| Did you get a local job, or are you taking advantage of
| geoarbitrage via a foreign remote job?
| retired wrote:
| In the process of setting up a company to do consultancy
| services for Dutch companies, but eventually want to
| shift to local companies once I get to learn the
| language, culture and business.
| tasuki wrote:
| > I left mainly because of housing prices
|
| I understand you're not the landlord then. I agree this
| is a problem: the same(ish) earning you mentioned in
| another comment makes social mobility difficult. Some
| people are born with a house, others without. That's
| super unfair. I'd first tax _that_ rather than income.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| Right now I'm not sure there is a country where young
| people are generally satisfied and optimistic about their
| future. America is a mess, Europe is generally a mess,
| China is struggling with too many grads who aren't able to
| find jobs matching their qualifications... From what I've
| heard things aren't exactly great in India either.
|
| Every country has its problems.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Australians will complain a lot but honestly the future
| is very bright. Higher exports than imports, government
| debt isn't completely out of line and it's not going
| exponential like some regions, it has European like
| public services, a median wealth 2.5x that of the USA,
| good employment figures.
|
| It's not perfect but i still think it's pretty good.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Housing is a challenge
| mandevil wrote:
| But how much of the Australian economy is extraction for
| the Chinese economy? My brief understanding of the Aussie
| economy is that a large part of it is iron, hydrocarbons,
| copper, etc. going abroad, largely going to feed the
| Chinese economic machine. So economic performance is
| heavily tied into Chinese performance.
|
| And the median wealth number is another way of saying
| "house prices are insane" right?
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| For the median wealth somewhat house price driven
| although there's also the reality that median and mean
| wealth in Australia is remarkably close together. You
| can't have median wealth driven by home equity if no one
| has a house yet in australia the median and say top 25%
| have remarkably similar houses.
|
| So yes they are high but it's not like the disparity in
| the USA where the median is well below Australia (lot's
| of people in the USA lost wealth in 2008 and never
| recovered) while the mean is well above (driven by the
| few that are extremely wealthy living a lifestyle
| unattainable to the commoners).
| tasuki wrote:
| Where did you move? I understand you're retired: that
| changes the situation somewhat.
|
| When I lived in Amsterdam, we were renting a flat. The
| gentleman we were renting from told us our rent easily
| covers all his expenses in South East Asia.
| retired wrote:
| Spain. And I have to apologise, I call myself retired but
| in reality I'm just unemployed. It's more of a year long
| sabbatical, but I jokingly call it retirement since I
| moved to Spain and many Dutch people do so for
| retirement. I'm planning on setting up a company here.
|
| Spain isn't great for being employed or freelance
| (autonomo) but if you set up a limited liability company
| (SL) and work from there it is not that bad. Tax on
| investments are averagely taxed compared to other
| countries.
| bluecalm wrote:
| >>Tax on investments are averagely taxed compared to
| other countries.
|
| That is only if you haven't accumulated wealth yet. The
| combination of quite high capital gain tax with sky high
| wealth tax, pretty high income tax isn't very attractive
| if your plan is to accumulate some wealth. If you just
| want to make enough every year to live there I guess it's
| reasonable though.
| retired wrote:
| I future-proofed myself by moving to a region with a
| EUR3M exception. So that I have a long way to go before
| paying wealth tax.
|
| CGT is progressive and around 20%, compared to other
| European countries that is fairly average. Some Eastern
| European countries are at 15%, Belgian is going to 10%,
| Switzerland differs per canton.
|
| Also, no CGT for fresh immigrants if you are able to use
| the Beckham law.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Yeah, I was chatting with a friend living in Spain once,
| and ascending the ladder in responsibility didn't make
| sense, as whatever salary increase he got would be heavily
| taxed, and it didn't make sense to bear much more
| responsibility for just a little bit of extra money a year.
|
| As you say, avg workers are "fine" there, but for anyone
| trying to standout or grow in their career, they will hit
| an income ceiling very fast due to the high taxation, so it
| doesn't make sense to keep on growing as you are not
| properly rewarded for it.
| logicchains wrote:
| And since China cracked down on the tech industry there
| aren't enough jobs for those new STEM graduates, so many are
| stuck doing gig work: https://asiasociety.org/policy-
| institute/19-percent-revisite... .
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| There was an interesting Freakonomics podcast a few months
| back that pointed out an interesting divide in how the US and
| China thinks about its leaders[0]. > China
| is a country that is run by engineers, while the U.S. is a
| country run by lawyers. Engineers, he explains, are driven to
| build while lawyers are driven to argue, and obstruct.
|
| Even Trump: > And even though Donald Trump
| is not a lawyer by any means, I think he is still a product
| of the lawyerly society, because lawsuits have been
| completely central to his business career. He has sued
| absolutely everyone. He has sued business partners, he has
| sued political opponents, he has sued his former lawyers as
| well. And there is, I think, something still very lawyerly
| about Donald Trump in which he is flinging accusations left
| and right, he's trying to intimidate people, trying to
| establish guilt in the court of public opinion
|
| Very interesting take and I think insightful on why the US is
| the way it is today and sidesteps the democracy vs autocracy
| debate.
|
| [0] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-
| engineers-a...
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Not just lawyerly society, special kind of asshole lawyer,
| as he was a protege of Roy Cohn.
| jwhitlark wrote:
| Supposedly Roy Cohn was startled by how easily he was
| discarded when he wasn't useful anymore. Makes me wonder
| who will be the next in line with the knife.
| fdw wrote:
| The episode was based on the book Breakneck: China's Quest
| to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang (Amazon: China's Quest
| to Engineer the Future)
|
| Very interesting read, with a lot more depth and details to
| this short (but accurate) summary.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| good thing i can talk myself in a circle to pretend everything
| bad is good. yes, in years past i touted the fact that all the
| best minds in the world want to come to america as a reason
| america no. 1, but now thst that doesn't seem to be the case as
| much, america still no. 1 somehow. see how i'm moving around
| electons on the internet? i'm really thinking, aren't i?
| jeron wrote:
| anyone else think the infographic is absolutely awful? why put
| number of employed instead of number of people hired?
|
| seems like it was made to fit a specific narrative...
| jleyank wrote:
| STEM people in science (used to) populate places like NIH, NSF
| and other granting agencies. Theh were project managers
| responsible for funding decisions, or actual researchers.
| Remember that people used think that pharma just did marketing
| with all the new drug ideas coming from academia or government
| labs? Well, these people were either the ones paying the academic
| labs or actually generating what pharma marketed.
|
| They also were the project managers and researchers in places
| like NRL and ARL, the premier research labs in the Navy and Army.
| Guiding weapon development along with the blue/green suits. They
| staffed DOE labs doing funding and research for things that went
| bump in the night, cleanup, energy development, etc.
|
| PhD's are the psychologists on staff in the VA helping glue
| veterans back together. They're also the -ologists (immune,
| endocrine, ...) who work with the MD's to diagnose and treat
| people. They also review new drug proposals to make sure they're
| tested for safety and effectiveness.
|
| There's probably some salted through the other departments doing
| things like agronomy, geology, ... Things that help food and
| energy production. There's more than you think in the various
| security agencies - people were surprised why the government was
| hiring for computational linguistics back in the 80's. They also
| handle funding for things that turned into that Net/Web thingie
| you're using to read this.
|
| Is it useful to have these kind of people on the public purse?
| Depends on whether you think funding research, regulating drugs,
| weapon research and cleanup, treating patients, ... are
| important. They're cheaper than the corresponding private
| individuals would be if they were contractors or being paid
| externally.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I think, for the VA specifically at least, this isn't accurate.
| I'm sure they have some phd psychologists around for other
| things but the bulk of the work you mentioned will be done by
| counselors with masters degrees and some psychiatrists
| overseeing them. Psychiatrists, as well as "the -ologists" you
| mentioned, are specialized medical doctors. They all get the
| same schooling and then specialize through the residency
| system.
|
| An MD is a doctorate-level degree and MD + residency is
| generally considered enough education for even research within
| a speciality, certainly patient care within it. MD/PhDs are
| rare, usually doing policy/leadership or extremely specific
| technical R&D. Almost never see them doing patient care, when
| you do it's normally because they misunderstood their own
| career interests in their 20s and now have to live with it.
|
| This thing is real bad but psych treatment at the VA isn't why.
| jleyank wrote:
| the -ologists can be both, then. My academic experience in
| ancient times had them as medicine related PhD's, but I guess
| MD's can specialize in that area from a treatment rather than
| a research area. MD/PhD's are rare but quite valuable for
| research projects because they can see patient records
| wearing their MD hat, but interact with the research teams
| with their PhD hat. They tend to have mediocre bedside
| manners cuz they rarely see a bed, and they're sorta burned
| out coming of all that schooling.
| dmoy wrote:
| NRL et al do a lot more than just weapons research too.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| This is a tale as old as time. Anyone who's followed AI research
| has seen this happen.
|
| Take Geoffrey Hinton and his students, for one example. Moved
| from the USA to Canada in the Regan era. Hinton (and Canada in
| general) saw an influx of otherwise USA-bound students from 2016
| on. And it's just happening again.
|
| I was a PhD student in deep learning ("AI") in the US from 2018
| through 2022. The "Muslim ban" at the time saw so many students
| who had their eyes set on the United States look elsewhere.
| During the 2020 election cycle, a fellow PhD student of mine (I
| was the only English student in an all-Chinese lab) thought Trump
| would win the election, and expressed that as, "I am so so so so
| so sad". (Anyone who has tried expressing their feelings in a
| language new to them will recognize this pattern of using
| intensifiers like this.)
|
| But the Project 2025 changes we saw were unique. In my
| perspective as a former academic, I don't think people outside
| academia generally appreciate the extent to which the reputation
| the United States had for research has been damaged.
| mmooss wrote:
| > This is a tale as old as time.
|
| > But the Project 2025 changes we saw were unique.
|
| I'm not sure what you're saying. Until the last paragraph, you
| seem to say that it's just the same thing continuing.
|
| As an academic you know that such claims are irrelevant without
| quantifying them. For example, the US has had inflation
| continuously for decades; does that mean recent inflation is
| not significant? How about 1980 compared with 1960? If my town
| is washed away by a flood, I don't say, 'we've always had
| rain'.
| giardini wrote:
| tl;dr summary:
|
| - "a net loss of 4224 STEM Ph.D.s"
|
| Far less than the headline "10k"
|
| - "departing Ph.D.s took with them a wealth of subject matter
| expertise and knowledge about how the agencies operate".
|
| Whether such "expertise and knowledge" is worthwhile or exclusive
| to these Ph.D.s, or even useful at all, remains to be seen.
|
| Every time I've seen a PhD enter a private organization they've
| gummed up the works and left only after bollixing things up.
| While possibly excellent for hard science research, PhDs can have
| a POV incompatible with solving problems quickly.
|
| What this means is that even MORE than the usual STEM PhDs will
| be entering the private sector, possibly _further_ gumming up the
| works, as bosses try to fit PnDs (round pegs) into private jobs
| (square holes).
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| If 14% of the PhDs employed by the U.S. Government was 10,109,
| then there were about 72,207 total. That's about 3.2% of the
| civilian government, compared to 2.1% in the public workforce
| (and 1.3% of population).
|
| So, the government tends to employ PhDs at a substantially higher
| (~50%) rate than the public workforce.
|
| Edit: Yeah, oops, people generally use public / private the other
| way around.
| cbsmith wrote:
| ...and unfortunately it is letting them go at a substantially
| higher rate than the public workforce.
| titzer wrote:
| It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them.
| NSF budget was cut 55% in the first year. The administration is
| doing everything possible to make it clear that no foreigners are
| welcome here. America is stabbing itself directly in the brain.
| guywithahat wrote:
| > It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund
| them
|
| If it's harder to fund them then it should be easier to recruit
| them. I don't think both can be true at the same time, unless
| you're saying it's harder to fund foreign PhD's with US tax
| dollars in which case I think you'll find limited sympathy for
| your cause.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > unless you're saying it's harder to fund foreign PhD's with
| US tax dollars in which case I think you'll find limited
| sympathy for your cause.
|
| As your sibling pointed out, the end result is China
| benefiting from that void.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something, but why can't it be true? If I'm
| a PhD deciding what to do with the next few years of my life,
| the fact that government jobs currently seem very unstable
| might make PhDs hesitant to choose this path. There's
| probably also at least some PhDs (given the overwhelmingly
| left leaning politics of grad students) that don't want to be
| involved with this administration. So maybe more PhDs are
| going into the private sector.
|
| On the other side, budget cuts might mean that you have less
| money to spend on the PhDs that are interested.
|
| So it doesn't seem inherently contradictory to me.
| bauldursdev wrote:
| It's not a fixed size of PhD candidates competing. A future
| PhD candidate may choose to not become a future PhD candidate
| because of changes. For example, a high school or
| undergraduate student might read all these articles and
| statistics about how funding is getting pulled and research
| is becoming more difficult and choose to take another path.
| They are no longer a competitor to be a PhD candidate, they
| do not bid down the prices.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The NSF _buys research_. PhD funding is not a gift, it is
| payment for a job. Buying research from citizens or
| noncitizens is not meaningfully different.
| adev_ wrote:
| European researcher here.
|
| There is an other thing that should make America worry.
|
| Research grants have been cut everywhere in the US. That cuts
| deep and terminated many scientific collaborations between USA
| and the EU Horizons projects in many STEMs research fields.
|
| That created a void.... and sciences is like nature: it hates
| void (and the lack of money...)
|
| My perception in the domain is that the resulting void is been
| fulfilled _everywhere_ by new collaborations with China.
| Because China has the money, the infrastructures, the will to
| progress and _a shit ton_ of smart engineers /PhDs.
|
| There is today 10x more conferences in China... more exchange
| with China... more common projects with China than 10y ago.
|
| So congratulations to the Trump team: your anti-intellectualism
| is actually directly fueling new technologies and research
| breakthroughs to the country you consider 'your enemy'.
| kevinsync wrote:
| You being an outside observer of my country, what do you
| think the mid-term (next ~decade) looks like if the US is
| somehow able to flush the toilet and do a complete 180 from a
| policy and administration perspective? I imagine even if
| people we need are welcomed back with open arms, they're not
| going to want to come. I sure wouldn't want to go back to a
| bar where the bouncer kicked the shit out of me!
|
| Just curious, it's hard to see things clearly from inside the
| carnival.
| detritus wrote:
| As an outsider not in academia, your system has poisoned
| your well.
|
| We trusted in you to do the Right Thing _, yet a
| significant sub-system of your culture has entirely
| successfully undermined your 'Checks and Balances' - a sub-
| system which has clearly been in action since at least the
| eighties.
|
| I don't know how you get rid of that. It's You.
|
| .
|
| _ I get that America/the West is far from perfect.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| Are you kidding?
|
| Currently I wouldn't dare to enter the US, while I'm sure
| I would be relatively safe in China. And: even before
| Trump the TSA had elements of despotism. All the while I
| never heard of Europeans being treated like shit in China
| -- simply the better hosts!
| Insanity wrote:
| 100% this.
|
| I keep mentioning that to people when they bring up a
| quite anti-China narrative (or paranoia). Most people in
| the western hemisphere are way more likely to be
| negatively impacted by the US than China.
|
| Europeans, Canadians etc are less likely to travel to
| China so of course Chinese media spying would be less
| immediately detrimental than the spying of US companies.
| But even when traveling to China, it's less likely you'll
| be treated poorly than when traveling to the US.
| sheikhnbake wrote:
| We in the US have been so propagandized against China
| that even relatively progressive people that are
| completely against the Trump admin think China is an
| authoritarian hellscape. And while China is obviously not
| a utopia, I'd be hard pressed to find a metric there that
| hasn't surpassed our own.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| China has no free speech and will start flexing its
| imperial muscle more now that the US is climbing down
| from the world stage.
|
| China is alright if you keep your head down and you're
| not of the wrong ethnicity, locked up in a work camp and
| not allowed to have kids, or too openly gay or trans and
| so on.
| Insanity wrote:
| US is regressing on trans rights, abortion, etc. Free
| speech is under threat with the president "attacking"
| media institutions. You have daylight murder by federal
| agents followed by propaganda campaigns to blame the
| victims themselves or on the Democratic Party to create
| more political friction.
|
| No one is saying China is perfect in these threads, we're
| just saying the US isn't necessarily better. Two
| countries can be shitty simultaneously.
| 9dev wrote:
| Ah, so you do have free speech, I take it? Unless you
| criticise a certain assassinated far right activist, of
| course.
|
| And don't even get me started on _flexing an imperial
| muscle._ South America and the EU would like a word.
| adev_ wrote:
| > I never heard of Europeans being treated like shit in
| China -- simply the better hosts!
|
| Yeah. Also lets not forget:
|
| - Citizen from many EU countries can now enter China visa
| free. No ESTA and no other administrative crap. Generally
| no problem to enter and leave the country as long as you
| respect the law there.
|
| - The Chinese authority are _very_ cooperative when it is
| about granting some visting Visa to researchers. Most
| Chinese research centers and Universities have a some
| kind of direct link to an office that can bypass some of
| the procedures.
|
| The situation is _way_ easier than it was 10y ago.
| Insanity wrote:
| As an outsider as well, I think the damage done will be
| hard to reverse in just a decade. You lost trust of your
| closest allies. Even after the current presidential term,
| why would we (Europeans, Canadians, ..) invest in ties with
| the US, when the _next next_ president can be an entire
| shitshow again?
|
| The American people have shown that they are okay voting
| for the same nationalistic rhetoric twice. If it was just
| once, maybe it's a fluke. Now it seems more like a pattern
| hinting at the mindset of ~50% of Americans.
|
| Also, if I want to be really pessimistic, I'd look at
| history, at some point Roman turned on Roman (Caesar
| crossing the Rubicon) after years/decades of political
| turmoil. The things happening today in Minnesota etc could
| be preludes a similar Rubicon crossing moment that will
| shatter the republic..
| adev_ wrote:
| > what do you think the mid-term (next ~decade) looks like
| if the US is somehow able to flush the toilet and do a
| complete 180 from a policy and administration perspective?
|
| I honestly do not know.
|
| Academia works with networking between peers and moves
| where the money is.
|
| In Academia, the relation between researchers and the
| 'names' in the domain matters a lot. But the money stream
| matters even more.
|
| When relations are created, I do not see them 'ending' just
| because US decided to play the good guys again and open the
| money stream again.
|
| It will help to restore some links yes, but will probably
| not cut any ties created with other countries.
| Intralexical wrote:
| > So congratulations to the Trump team: your stupidity and
| your hate for intellectualism is directly fueling new
| technologies to the country you consider 'your enemy'.
|
| Do we have any evidence that they actually consider China (or
| Russia) to be "the enemy"? They are fellow authoritarians,
| with a shared goal of normalizing domestic political
| suppression.
| drdaeman wrote:
| It's both.
|
| Every authoritarian country thrives on "we're surrounded by
| enemies, enemies everywhere" trope.
|
| But, of course, all those glorious leaders happily shake
| hands and dine with each other, patting their backs and
| sharing ideas on how to keep peasants in check and
| themselves in power.
| briantakita wrote:
| Kayfaybe...Donald Trump worked with WWE for a reason...
| somethingsome wrote:
| Hi, I looked into joint collaborations between many countries
| and EU, but honestly I didn't really find anything EU-China
| that was interesting, most funding agencies do not fund
| collaborative projects EU-China, or maybe I'm missing
| something, in any cases it didn't strike me. If you have some
| examples I would be curious.
|
| There are way more opportunities with other countries that
| I'm aware of, mostly EU-EU.
| bnjms wrote:
| I'm unfamiliar with academia but doesn't this only measure
| formal funding? It doesn't measure collaboration with
| separate EU funding.
| adev_ wrote:
| You are not going to find much because China is not _yet_
| part officially of Horizons (South Korea and Japan are but
| not China).
|
| Most of these collaborations happens under the hood and are
| peer-to-peer and project based.
|
| I can speak for the fields that I am close to:
|
| - For Astrophysics, China already provide both hardware and
| computing resources to some projects. Conferences in China
| are in common and exchange are frequents. Rumors of
| collaborations on Space and scientific satellites are also
| on the way.
|
| - For nuclear physics, China is actively participating in
| several software stack used for nuclear fusion. There is
| also mutual collaborations on some nuclear fusion reactors
| and they regularly host conferences where EU researchers
| are invited. They progressed tremendously compared to 10y
| ago.
|
| - For particle physics, China was historically playing
| alone and was planning to create and operate their own
| particle collider similar to the LHC in size. This is not
| on the table anymore. There is a deeper collaborations with
| several EU institutes including CERN, they also voiced
| their interest in the FCC project.
|
| - For Neurosciences, their labs has permissions to execute
| wet experiments on animals that are forbidden on most EU
| territories and that I will not describe. A lot of data are
| shared both way between China and several EU labs. Many
| neurosciences related conferences have emerged in China,
| exchanges are much more common that they were.
|
| - For HPC and A.I, this is by far the most active and
| pushed research domain actually. Alibaba, Tencent and
| others are even proposing computing resources _for free_ on
| some projects in exchange of conference attendance in China
| and collaborations. There is not much collaboration on
| hardware (due to embargos and NDAs) but _a lot_ of
| collaborations on software.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| I certainly believe you, but you're missing the point of the
| current administration goals. Trump wont be around in 10
| years when the consequences of their actions become clear. In
| fact, he is gone in 3 years, and the admin is only concerned
| within that timeframe. Their strategy is quite clear: please
| their base while simultaneously positioning the family for
| influence on a global scale.
| TacoCommander wrote:
| I'm waking up to all the damage that huge tech companies
| cause. They destroy communities by creating huge inequalities
| among people.
|
| As long as we have Citizens United here in the USA, big money
| (no matter who it belongs to) will continue to threaten
| democracy.
|
| So for the sake of my country, take your tech industry
| somewhere else.
| john_moscow wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: there has been a steady decline of standards
| in the research community in the past decade or two. First
| reproducibility crisis. Then, some topics becoming political
| taboo where the unorthodox opinion would get you fired and
| canceled. The credibility of the science in the West has been
| falling, and the recent change of administration is predictably
| axing something that has a perceived strong bias in the
| opposite direction.
|
| An optimist in me hopes that we can get back to unbiased
| science, where it doesn't have to agree with the current side,
| but both sides perceive it as fair and agree to leave it alone
| for common good. A realist thinks that it will happen in China,
| and the West has just run out of steam.
| munificent wrote:
| _> back to unbiased science_
|
| Science has _always_ struggled with biases. There was no
| perfect time in the past that you are imagining where that
| wasn 't an issue.
|
| If it seems worse today, it's largely because the systemic
| biases that were _already_ there are becoming more visible,
| which is a sign of progress.
| briantakita wrote:
| When Science replaced Religion...Science took the place of
| Religion...
| adev_ wrote:
| > Then, some topics becoming political taboo where the
| unorthodox opinion would get you fired and canceled
|
| This is garbage.
|
| What you describe might be the case in some social-sciences
| circles but never has been the case in most STEMs fields.
|
| If you have a (sensical) unorthodox idea that displease a
| research director, 10 other research directors will be very
| happy to dig up this exact idea in a slightly different
| context.
|
| This is how sciences progress.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| The %55 budget cut is proposed, it fortunately hasn't happened
| yet and it might not survive congress.
| huxley wrote:
| You're not wrong that it hasn't been passed by congress but
| just the proposal has already led to a massive decrease in
| grants. I am not as optimistic that Congress would go against
| admin policy
| ModernMech wrote:
| They can cut budgets without Congress by reappropriating
| money now, it's one of the powers they've managed to usurp.
| But they don't have to cut anything, they manage to curb
| spending by throwing a wrench in the whole machine and
| watching awards crawl to a halt. They cancel grants, fire or
| drive out reviewers to increase review times, or delay
| follow-up funding. Maybe the funding comes through eventually
| but students need to be funded continually; the government
| will pull their visas if they don't have funding to enroll.
|
| They're also straight up harassing and arresting foreign
| students for no reason, so they don't even have to muck with
| the budget at all to materially ruin things.
| emeril wrote:
| pretty sure it would tough to Trump and his cronies to find any
| brain to stab in their heads which wasn't already gobbled up by
| brain worms
| dmix wrote:
| > Science's analysis found that reductions in force, or RIFs,
| accounted for relatively few departures in 2025. Only at the
| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where 16% of the 519
| STEM Ph.D.s who left last year got pink RIF slips, did the
| percentage exceed 6%, and some agencies reported no STEM Ph.D.
| RIFs in 2025.
|
| > At most agencies, the most common reasons for departures were
| retirements and quitting. Although OPM classifies many of these
| as voluntary, outside forces including the fear of being fired,
| the lure of buyout offers, or a profound disagreement with Trump
| policies, likely influenced many decisions to leave.
|
| So similar to most of the other federal agency reductions, around
| 5-10% were formally let go but the majority left voluntarily.
| alecco wrote:
| US Academia will struggle to keep their current PhDs in
| administrative positions. If it quacks like a Ponzi...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_bubble_in_the...
|
| https://students.bowdoin.edu/bowdoin-review/features/death-b...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/highereducation/comments/13rno6w/wh...
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| Competency holds less regard than sycophancy and loyalty. Who can
| kiss ass the best? who is least likely to question the
| Fuhrerprinzip?
|
| It is no coincidence that these kinds of personality-based
| dictatorships often devolve into dysfunction as time goes on.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Well - I would not want to work under the orange king either. The
| guy kind of tries to have some revival of the 1930s era with the
| hipster TechBros. I think they need to compensate everyone else
| with their wealth - just redistribute their wealth at once,
| equally. Many people will be happy. Few superrich oligarchs will
| not be happy. That's the way to go. Everything else just a weak
| distraction.
| thegreatpeter wrote:
| That exodus was only 3% of the 335,192 federal workers who exited
| last year but represents 14% of the total number of Ph.D.s in
| science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or health
| fields employed at the end of 2024 as then-President Joe Biden
| prepared to leave office.
|
| Would be interesting to see the age of these STEM or health
| fields employees. What if they were all over the age of 70? Would
| that still bother everyone?
|
| Do you think this article was framed to cause outrage and
| frustration?
| layer8 wrote:
| Unless a comparable number of younger PhDs were hired to
| compensate, it's a reduction of PhD-level federal workers in
| either case.
| mekdoonggi wrote:
| > What if they were all over the age of 70? Would that still
| bother everyone?
|
| Why should anyone consider this hypothetical? Are you
| advocating for an age limit of 70 for working for the
| government?
|
| > Do you think this article was framed to cause outrage and
| frustration?
|
| No.
| periodjet wrote:
| My heavens!
|
| Because we don't need to focus on getting people into government
| who we can trust to represent our interests as their prime duty.
| No, what we really want to focus on is finding MORE PEOPLE WITH
| DOCTORATES. Yes.
| mekdoonggi wrote:
| Would you say that the number of people you can trust to
| represent our interests as their prime duty has gone up
| recently?
| Herring wrote:
| The problem with these threads is everyone wants to complain
| about Trump, but support drops drastically when you talk about
| policies that actually help buffer against the far-right. Eg
| implementing robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce
| status anxiety and grievance. How many of you software engineers
| want to sign up for high taxes? It's basically tragedy of the
| commons.
|
| Economics on its own is probably not sufficient either. You
| probably also need widespread unionization, a _Cordon Sanitaire_
| , and probably German-style intelligence surveillance of the far-
| right too.
| yodon wrote:
| This isn't a taxes issue. The assault on higher education and
| the sciences by this administration is inseparable from the
| assault on minorities and free speech. This is the
| authoritarian playbook 101. Mao went as far as locking up all
| the PhD's and sending them to work camps.
|
| Not taxes. Authoritarianism.
| Herring wrote:
| Yes it's a taxes issue, because that's how you pay for
| European-style safety nets. And again that's probably not
| enough either, cause Denmark/Netherlands are having issues
| with housing causing the far-right to surge. So you probably
| need Vienna-style public housing too. The US is so far from
| the correct solutions you're not even on the same planet.
| munificent wrote:
| This has nothing to do with funding.
|
| The US is spending $892.6 billion on the military, $11.3B
| on ICE, and planning to spend $400 million building a
| _fucking ballroom_.
|
| It's about authoritarianism.
| Herring wrote:
| I want you to go to your favorite frontier LLM and ask
| how much it would cost the US to implement Vienna-style
| public housing. Figure in paying off current homeowners
| to get their support. Restrict it to major cities where
| housing is the worst, just to make it easier. I bet you
| it's well over $10T long-term. Iraq was $2-3T long term.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_
| War
| RealityVoid wrote:
| You know what? I'll bite. I just went to Gemini and asked
| this and the answer was between 2.5 and 5 trillion. So
| less than 2 Iraq wars. Deff a tractable problem if so.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| A word of warning: the US government will read this and
| figure out the solution is another Iraq war.
| relaxing wrote:
| You're right to be thinking of second- and third-order
| solutions to these problems, which unfortunately the commenters
| in these threads aren't prepared to engage with.
|
| But the "economic anxiety" angle is well debunked at this
| point. Grievance, stoked by the right wing takeover of the
| media, is the answer. And we'll need to go a lot further along
| the vector of solutions you've started down to fix that.
| tehjoker wrote:
| These are the wages of nationalism. A stupid but powerfully
| attractive idea.
| aw124 wrote:
| And this is only the beginning. Once the U.S. fully transforms
| into a China-like totalitarian state, complete with a social
| rating system and cameras for automatic payments everywhere, we
| will witness the collapse of educational institutions, the
| downfall of innovative companies, and an inability to address
| external multi-trillion dollar debt.
| mekdoonggi wrote:
| China-like is too complimentary to the intelligence of US
| leadership at the moment.
| awacs wrote:
| Are we great yet?
| tsoukase wrote:
| Scientists of >=PhD level sacrifice their lifetime to a low-
| profit goal. They could very well be occupied in the industry and
| earn millions (granted not all of them) with their talent.
| Instead they demand and enjoy social respect and at the moment
| Europe respects them more than the USA.
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