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How the U.S. became a science superpower

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Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#141

Post by apical_dendrite »

jack_h wrote: post #52
cs702 wrote: post #7

Worth reading in its entirety. The following four paragraphs, about post-WWII funding of science in Britain versus the US, are spot-on, in my view: > Britain’s focused, centralized model using government research labs was created in a struggle for short-term survival. They achieved brilliant breakthroughs but lacked the scale, integration and capital needed to dominate in the post-war world. > The U.S. built a decent…

> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…

How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war and there were coal shortages.

Britain was at a point where without massive aid from the US huge numbers of people would die of cold or starvation. The US has huge surpluses of food and energy.

The idea that we're in such a crisis that we have to eat our own seed corn (massive cuts to science research which is one of the main drivers of US economic growth) is crazy.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#142

Post by philwelch »

Retric wrote: post #62
jack_h wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…

US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. This is unlike say corn subsidies which not only reduce economic efficiency but also have direct negative heath impacts furthering the harm. Medicare spending is problematic because it’s consumptive, but there’s ways to minimize the expense without massively reducing care. The VA for example dramaticall…

> US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results.

There's an assumption here that deserves some closer examination. If we are taking this as a justification for federal science spending, we would have to also support a policy of awarding research grants on the basis of expected long term return on investment, which is not the criteria applied now. Furthermore, we would have to justify this spending in competition with whatever economic investments the government could make elsewhere, or that the American taxpayers would make if we let them keep their money in the first place. From the standpoint of scientific research I don't think this is necessarily what we want, but even if it was we would have some hard questions about the last few decades of federal research funding.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#143

Post by ijidak »

> By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years

Was this written in 2030? The war ended in 1945.

Just a minor nit... It was jarring to see a statement of questionable accuracy in the opening paragraph.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#144

Post by philwelch »

9283409232 wrote: post #74
jack_h wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…

The problem with US debt comes from their unwillingness to tax billionaires. We just passed even more tax cuts for rich people and are scheduled to add more to the debt. Just tax rich people, it's not complicated.

False. The combined net worth of all US billionaires is about 6 trillion dollars. The US national debt is over 36 trillion dollars.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#145

Post by mixermachine »

apercu wrote: post #17
Arubis wrote: post #9

Being the sole western industrialized nation that hadn't just had most of their infrastructure bombed to rubble can't have hurt.

Absolutely, but what did that give the United States, a 10-year advantage? Last time I checked, WWII ended 80 years ago.

Science and progress are not a one off thing. The scientist are not used up after 10 years. They keep working and keep the advantages going. The advantage attracts even more intelligent people from every corner of the world.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#146

Post by exe34 »

consumer451 wrote: post #138
monknomo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, a relatively easy fix to a negative replacement rate (at least when you have a well-run, wealthy, attractive country) is immigration. Replacement rate isn't a problem when you let more folks in

I agree, but this only works if one is willing to accept a changing racial profile/culture. It appears that many people do not accept this idea. Not just in the USA, but look at Japan or South Korea, for example. To me, the really interesting question is how to stop what appears to have been inevitable for the last 40+ years: when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates drop to tragic levels. I believe what co…

> when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates drop to tragic levels.

heck maybe that's what trump's doing - tank the American economy and hope it brings the birth rate back up...

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#147

Post by philwelch »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #141
jack_h wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…

How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war…

> How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war and there were coal shortages.

Up until you got to the rationing and coal shortages I think the parallels with the contemporary US are pretty obvious.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#148

Post by jasonhong »

jack_h wrote: post #117
Retric wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. This is unlike say corn subsidies which not only reduce economic efficiency but also have direct negative heath impacts furthering the harm. Medicare spending is problematic because it’s consumptive, but there’s ways to minimize the expense without massively reducing care. The VA for example dramaticall…

Even if those attribution studies are 100% correct that doesn’t mean this system optimally allocates resources. The ultimate issue with our social programs is due to demographics. An aging population whose replacement rate is projected to go negative (more deaths than births) within the next few years is catastrophic for the way we fund those programs. We absolutely should try and reduce their operating costs though;…

Optimal relative to what? And more seriously, name any large program, government or corporate, that is "optimal".

Google, Duolingo, and DataBricks are three multibillion dollar tech companies based in part on NSF research. The return on investment from NSF-funded research spinning out into companies is enormous.

While the system could use some tuning, it also works pretty well as is. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#149

Post by hackable_sand »

fallingknife wrote: post #105
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds Probably. But the solution almost certainly doesn't involve the federal government policing what is and isn't researched, discussed and taught. We had a system that worked. We're destroying the parts of it that worked, while retaining the parts that are novel. (Turning conservatives into a protected class, for instance--not even the CCP expl…

Why would the people paying for the research not control what it can be spent on? Letting the people who spend the money decide is typically not a good system.

...Why would the people paying control what it's spent on...?

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#150

Post by CamperBob2 »

jack_h wrote: post #117
Retric wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. This is unlike say corn subsidies which not only reduce economic efficiency but also have direct negative heath impacts furthering the harm. Medicare spending is problematic because it’s consumptive, but there’s ways to minimize the expense without massively reducing care. The VA for example dramaticall…

Even if those attribution studies are 100% correct that doesn’t mean this system optimally allocates resources. The ultimate issue with our social programs is due to demographics. An aging population whose replacement rate is projected to go negative (more deaths than births) within the next few years is catastrophic for the way we fund those programs. We absolutely should try and reduce their operating costs though;…

that doesn’t mean this system optimally allocates resources.

When's the last time someone in the Trump administration "optimally allocated resources" in a way that didn't "allocate" them to his or her own bank account?

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