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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

#401

A better title would be: "How this one time the U.S. became a science superpower". We all know the rule: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Two significant and obvious difference come to mind. I'm sure there are others. 1) WWII did major physical damage to Europe and Japan, to say nothing of the underlying economic damage (e.g., Britain's war debt handcuffed them). Sans any serious competition, of co…

>Subsidies that aren't benefitting Sam a/o US taxpayers

Why do you think that?

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I have no idea how you read that and interpret it as "taxing billionaires will pay the entire debt." 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 ch…

I'm not moving goalpost, you just read my statement wrong. There are many steps to take but taxing billionaires is a crucial step to getting the funding to fix many of the other problems that cities don't have the money to tackle.

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

#403
post #52
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…

I don’t think your “existential problem” and Churchill’s are in any way equivalent.

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

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience Chinese academics are far more bilingual than western ones. I think that for Chinese academics the English publications are generally of a higher quality and more prestigious, but I’m sure that too will change over time. I can definitely say that Chinese publications have gotten much better in terms of quality over the last 20 years and there are now a lot of results worth translating. At this point…

> Chinese academics are far more bilingual than western ones. In what sense, since most of the western world doesn't have English as a native language, and many US researchers were born in other countries?

Sorry poor turn of phrase. I meant this in the sense of the publication language. Yes - most academics everywhere speak a few languages.

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any reason why specifically "indirect cost reimbursement" is anything to do with this. Sure, individually billing labs is administrative burden, but it's a tiny drop in the ocean of inane bureaucracy that university researchers already have to deal with today. And maybe if we got rid of the blanket overhead percentage, it would put pressure on universities to cut a lot of the crap. Researchers are much mo…

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of research funding, and quite frankly repeating it without even basic research borders on negligence. Universities use indirect funds for maintaining facilities, the shared equipment, bulk purchases of materials, staff for things like cleaning and disposal. It is pivotal that these funds are available in the right amount or research physically cannot happen despite being "indir…

Indirect rates are negotiated. What are the incentives for the government negotiators to get the lowest possible rate? I honestly don't know; I'd like to understand more about the underlying drivers here.

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

#406
post #376
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> President Biden (or rather, someone with control of President Biden’s autopen) issued Dr. Fauci a blanket pardon backdated to 2014. This merely proved that President Biden believed that President Trump will prosecute and imprison Dr Fauci if given the opportunity.

To believe that, they would have to believe he had done something that a prosecutor would object to and that was serious enough to get Fauci imprisoned. Which is to say, that he had committed a crime. If we're expecting it to be an arbitrary act of legal harassment, Trump's team could concoct something based on Fauci's work in 2013. Corruption isn't limited to a 2014-2025 window; unless they are basing it on facts.

As we have seen, Trump can hire prosecutors who will prosecute anybody he points his little finger at. He always hires lackeys, so it was easy to predict he would harass Fauci.

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

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im afraid you'd need to be pretty liberal with your definition of rich at this point to dig us out of this hole through taxes alone.

No, you are just underestimating how rich the rich are.

Could you be overestimating how easy it is to take possession of their money given global free trade? In 10 years, what are the odds you and others will have finally, after all these years, actually managed to have “taxed the rich” as has been proposed as the solution to current debt levels for many years now? If we cannot be certain of those tax revenues from finally “taxing the rich”, then they cannot solve the debt problem and we therefore need to look for other solutions. Not that the wreckless and irresponsible cuts from DOGE are the solution. They are likely to increase the size and scope of the government in the long run, after impairing it’s efficiency and operational capacity in the short. Hopefully the dems don’t blow the opportunity this time.

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

#408
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the current system generates net income for the government, but you’re claiming it needs to be changed in order to do so?

I would actually question the assumption that it still does. It's not obvious whether it does or doesn't, because the payoff horizon is in the very long term.

Well, last year it generated more than the sum of all the money speant since what, WWII?

Research funding is really cheap compared to everything else the government does.

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

#409
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are far too many documented instances of it actually working to call it a fantasy. There are no documented instances of a truly free market. The parent's point I think has less to do with "it has been tried and it failed" and moreso that the idea that truly free market can exist is pure fantasy. FWIW - Costa Rica is probably the greatest example of a Libertarian's dream of a free market. I would love to show…

> There are no documented instances of a truly free market. There's no such thing as pure water, either. Nor is there any person who has not had impure thoughts. Nor can you ever cut a board to an exact length. Nor has anything created by man (or nature) been perfect. The historical reality is the more free a free market is, the better it performs. A free market does not have to be a "truly free market" in order to d…

It would be interesting to note how you define a free market in this context and what makes it “more free”.

Because a market can not be free unless there are rules and they are enforced.

Without rules and government intervention when necessary, what you get is the law of the jungle, which is precisely the thing the last 12000 years of human history has been about escaping.

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

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you can easily observe it. Look at Germany. Not investing sufficiently into education, public Infrastructure, hospitals, and probably more. Inefficient bureaucracy everywhere. Long term effects already visible and only becoming more pronounced. People have a 4y political memory and electing the same shit again. This apparently will continue until we hit rock bottom. I just hope others will be ready to face an…

Blaming Germany’s problems on the free market is a wild conclusion to make. Germany’s underinvestment in public infrastructure is a combination of an obsession with minimising public debt at any cost, a wast and complicated bureaucracy that allows people to delay projects almost inevitably.

The money is there, it is being put into the wrong hands and into silly bureaucracy (for example by having to put out construction projects on the EU market, while local businesses collapse, ruining Germany's own economy).

The market does not regulate that, and everyone who takes a look can see that, no matter how often some FDP or CDU wacko will claim otherwise. That is the point I am making. The market is very short sighted, oriented towards short term gain, at the cost of the general public. The general public needs to deal with the fallout of it all. Terrible train service, bad infrastructure, expensive public transport, too many cars, bad air quality, bad health, lacking education, the list goes on. All those matters are matters, where spending does not directly benefit some already wealthy group of people.

It goes even further: The "market", consists also of lobbyists, who do everything they can to influence politicians and get policies implemented, that make people buy cars, even at the cost of worsening public infrastructure. They have delayed developing electric cars and are now clinging to the German market. They do not care about normal people having to get to work via public transport. Buy a frickin' car! Is their response. Instead of improving public transport, it gets noticeably worse every year. So the free market is not only responsible for not doing good things, it is also responsible for actively harming the population.

Now it may be, that the free market also has its upsides. But the view that it will solve all the problems if we only let it is very naive and proven wrong again and again.

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