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Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

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Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#51

Post by xnx »

epistasis wrote: post #13
apsec112 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of federal spending goes to the military (including Veterans Affairs), Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and debt interest. Everything else doesn't matter much. This is especially true given that Republicans will probably increase the deficit; any money saved will go to tax cuts for the rich, and then some.

For example: > The Senate on Friday forged ahead with plans to give the military an additional $150 billion in spending even as the Pentagon seeks to make sweeping changes and reductions in its budget. Senators voted 52-48 in favor of a budget resolution that will unlock $340 billion in spending for U.S.-Mexico border security, energy independence, Coast Guard modernization and military investments while mandating cu…

Step 1: Fire people to "save" single digit billions

Step 2: Give 100's of billions in tax cuts to the richest

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#52

Post by cavisne »

mikeyouse wrote: post #40
robomartin wrote: post #25

[flagged]

The thing is, the team that fired all these researchers doesn’t have that data either. So it’s extremely easy to be critical of their haphazard cuts since they’re made completely arbitrarily with the only consideration so far being the ease of firing them based on their probationary status. The process and detail you’re asking for would be the responsible way to shrink the government and is the polar opposite of what…

Non-probationary employees can't be fired (and even voluntary resignations are rate-limited by the Iron Mountain mine shaft elevator). So every day that process takes lowers the number of employees that can even be fired. Once it gets to a year (very easily) they would all have come off probation so nothing could be done.

Everyone saying "oh something should be done but just do it slower" is actually saying do nothing.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#53

Post by arrobbiato »

sneak wrote: post #50

Consent matters. There is no worse tyranny than to force someone to pay for something they do not want to buy, simply because you think it would be good for them. I am vehemently pro-research and pro-education, but these tax-funded programs are not it. There must be some meaningful connection to the delivery of value, otherwise this stuff is just public-private wealth transfer. This seems obvious to me. Why should th…

If you require taxpayers to consent to every single line item, voting is going to become rather cumbersome.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#54

Post by bongodongobob »

abirch wrote: post #31
polairscience wrote: post #28

This is true for many programs for reasons that will be hard to understand if you aren't a scientist. The NSF program managers are often pulled out of academia for brief periods of their career to do various tasks as experts. This means they are often probationary. This is the only way to hire people with deep expertise on the topic-du-jour. The trump administration fired in wide swaths many probationary employees at…

In addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding. We may be looking at a lost decade.

We're losing an entire generation at least. The pain that these cuts are going to cause won't be felt overnight. It will be felt over decades. "Things have been set into motion that cannot be undone".

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#55

Post by tart-lemonade »

Kindra wrote: post #32

Notwithstanding the other awful aspects of all of this, there’s a certain vibe of, “people who don’t understand how a system works attempting to act like they know how the system works and are too cowardly to admit they are breaking everything.” This just reads like “Character Limit” except replace Twitter with the federal government.

It's like an internet argument spilled out into the real world, with all the posturing and bravado to increase perceived expertise.

Except it's gambling with an entire nation's fortune, instead of likes/votes/reactions.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#56

Post by atq2119 »

Fade_Dance wrote: post #41
forgotoldacc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question is, what negatively changed when the debt went from 600k to 666k? What about 500k to 600k? What will negatively change if it goes from 666k to 700k? I hear a lot about the debt going up. Not once have I ever heard what the consequences of this debt are to the regular tax payer. None of these cuts are going to give normal people significant tax cuts, and cutting all these programs certainly doesn't s…

>Not once have I ever heard what the consequences of this debt are to the regular tax payer. Inflation, and systemic fragility. The second part is esoteric but extremely important. In financial systems, you often find that risk clusters in gray areas where models are incomplete or where the cost doesn't show up as a line item on a report. For example, increasing the bank leverage ratios to tamp down long term yields…

The fragility point is a good one, but it's also misleading if you only look at one side of the equation. The other side is assets sloshing about the system -- like a large tanker without internal divisions, if there are a lot of assets sloshing about and the tanker gets into bad weather, the internal movement of assets can increasingly destabilize the whole thing.

That's one aspect of retirement systems that has always concerned me. Sure, it's neat to give people the control over retirement that comes with investing in an open market. But contrast this to public retirement systems where you pay in and the money is used to pay out retirement (of other people) immediately. Ultimately, both systems have to be sustained by a real economy that can provide the goods and services that folks require during retirement. But one of them puts a large amount of assets into the hands of unelected money managers, which is surely a potential source of instability.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#58

Post by sneak »

arrobbiato wrote: post #53
sneak wrote: post #50

Consent matters. There is no worse tyranny than to force someone to pay for something they do not want to buy, simply because you think it would be good for them. I am vehemently pro-research and pro-education, but these tax-funded programs are not it. There must be some meaningful connection to the delivery of value, otherwise this stuff is just public-private wealth transfer. This seems obvious to me. Why should th…

If you require taxpayers to consent to every single line item, voting is going to become rather cumbersome.

[flagged]

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#60

Post by dsr_ »

sneak wrote: post #50

Consent matters. There is no worse tyranny than to force someone to pay for something they do not want to buy, simply because you think it would be good for them. I am vehemently pro-research and pro-education, but these tax-funded programs are not it. There must be some meaningful connection to the delivery of value, otherwise this stuff is just public-private wealth transfer. This seems obvious to me. Why should th…

You don't believe that, or you would have moved to be out from under this ultimate tyranny. Somalia, perhaps.

Your argument is the classic Randist Libertarian one: "There is no such thing as society, everything I did I earned myself with no reference to anyone." It is, of course, complete and utter garbage. Government spending is the only known way of constructing projects that are not attractive money-makers: rural electrification, communications systems, roads, water treatment, education. In order to keep currency flowing, governments remove it from circulation via taxation.

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