321–330 of 529 posts
It also didn't hurt that a certain European science superpower started purging academics based on ideology, said academics being more than welcome in the USA. Wait a minute...
I'm pretty sure the US is currently pushing for merit-based admission.
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…
Tax revenue as percentage of GDP right now 17%. You can pick random countries and compare. China 26%, Sweden 41%, Japan 32% etc. Do you see the issue? When we ran a surplus during Clinton's admin, we were at 20%.
Where did you get these figures from? According to OECD, the US' tax revenue-to-GDP ratio was 27.6% in 2022 and 25.2% in 2023: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-sub-i... It was 28.3% in 2000, when Clinton was still President.
It annoys me no end to read so many comments to the effect of "why didn't they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?". Not that I'm saying there were not any economic failures by various British governments over the years.
Honestly, so many Americans have no idea about their country's foreign policy. I guess you have to be on the receiving end of their short stick to understand
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…
Systems don’t remain constant, though, and every system gets “gamed” once the incentives are well understood. I’m 100% for investment in scientific research, but I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds. We’ve seen so many reports of celebrity scientists committing fraud at our most elite institutions, and a publish or perish model that encourages that bad behavior as well as junk sc…
It’s not surprising to me that this post ends with an unsupported “so many reports” coda about research fraud. Research fraud is not zero but it’s extremely rare. It’s unsurprising to me that the “we really care about research integrity” crowd has joined forces with the “let’s defund all research institutions with no replacement” crowd, because it was always obvious that was where this would end.
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…
Total? Is this a lot? “Today, U.S. universities license 3,000 patents, 3,200 copyrights and 1,600 other licenses to technology startups and existing companies”
I'm surprised that there's been no mention of Operation Paperclip, neither in the article nor in the comments here. Seems like a huge part of the story to leave out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
A favorite example of mine is the idea that World War 1 would not have happened if only Duke Ferdinand's driver had been told of the route change during the Sarajevo visit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Silly of me to take you at your word when you said, "the problem with US debt comes from their unwillingness to tax billionaires".
Silly you indeed. I have no idea how you read that and interpret it as "taxing billionaires will pay the entire debt." As I mentioned in another comment, taxing billionaires is crucial step but one of many needed.
It’s the direct, logical implication of the statement and you are obviously moving the goalposts after the fact. The truth is, any tax increases will have to affect just about everyone who pays taxes in order to make any real difference. There is no possible way that taxing billionaires more is even a significant chunk of the solution.