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Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

latimes.com

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Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#191

Post by mindslight »

Theodores wrote: post #92
davidw wrote: post #31

Well, yes, that's the point. Authoritarians want to consolidate power and loot wealth, not improve things or make the world a better place.

It is the art of the deal with Trump and I would say that he is a narcissist rather than authoritarian. Trump has a massive ego and I would have expected him to want the biggest rockets, and to pain them gold. If he did then I would denounce him for spending money on space when America has trillions of debt. I don't disagree with him on everything he says just because he said it. So, with space, my honest take is tha…

You are rambling around in circles to avoid the plain truth in front of you. Trump is an autocratic authoritarian. His being a narcissist contributes to that. The two are not mutually exclusive.

> I don't disagree with him on everything he says just because he said it.

At this point, doing so is a better strategy than deferring judgement, while even more "shit" continues to "flood the zone". I'm a libertarian, and I gave this guy a benefit of the doubt for far too long. When looked at from a non-partisan view, all of his policies have been somewhere from neutral to bad to terrible for America. Referencing real problems and frustrations, yes. But completely ineffective or even self-defeating for actually helping with those problems.

> So, with space, my honest take is that it was all just a Cold War thing all along

> It seems to me that China and India are doing space science things now. They can get on with it

So you're content to just give up on the current cold war then? Throw in the towel and hand world leadership to China? Why?

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#192

Post by Intralexical »

duxup wrote: post #2

Talk: "America first!" Actual policy: "America... whatever..." The scale of anti-science policies is historic in their scale and even breadth of topics.

The types of personality that turn into an authoritarian when given power tend to have damaged senses of both internal identity and external reality.

When Trump says "America First" or "Leftists hate our country", what he really means is himself. He's not really lying; "America", in that context, is just an extension of his own ego. Likewise when Putin talks about the "Russian state" or "Russian world", that's something that he conceptualizes as an extension of his own physical body. The channels run by Vlad Vexler on YouTube have an accessible discussion of some of this if you're more interested.

It's not that he wants to hurt federal workers, set back science, or destroy US state capacity. But he does so anyway, because his concept of "America" is one that stops at his own ego. Other people aren't really real to him.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#193

Post by alistairSH »

somenameforme wrote: post #179
alistairSH wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could zero out the military budget and that still doesn't get us anywhere close to balanced. Even cutting 100% of discretionary spending barely does the job. We either need massive cuts in mandatory spending (fundamental changes to social contract) or increased revenue (politically not viable). There's also near zero evidence we actually need a balanced budget for a healthy economy.

> There's also near zero evidence we actually need a balanced budget for a healthy economy. I don't think this is really supportable. Obviously one can appeal to the practically endless examples of countries that destroyed their own economies with debt. Of course the obvious argument to this is that this hasn't happened to the US. But there were extremely unique, and liminal, circumstances that explain this, that a s…

That's fair. I should have been more precise... There's little evidence we need to have a totally balanced budget every year. Current spending levels are likely unsustainable. Either way, we still can't balance the budget by only cutting discretionary spending - any serious discussion of a balanced budget MUST include the revenue side, plus possible changes to the social contract (IE, all the programs that just about everybody wants to keep).

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#194

Post by bumby »

rockemsockem wrote: post #189
bumby wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the government has much more control over all aspects, especially design. That changed with the commercial crew program.

And that was good because... Why?

It would potentially mitigate the risk identified by the GGP regarding “unreliable” contractors who force risks on you that you may not want. Same reason I often choose to do house maintenance myself. Not to say it’s also not without costs/risks, it just comes down to which balance you prefer.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#195

Post by sc68cal »

rockemsockem wrote: post #189
bumby wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the government has much more control over all aspects, especially design. That changed with the commercial crew program.

And that was good because... Why?

[flagged]

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#196

Post by burkaman »

refurb wrote: post #139
davidw wrote: post #31

Well, yes, that's the point. Authoritarians want to consolidate power and loot wealth, not improve things or make the world a better place.

You're not supposed to take the Democratic talking points about Trump being a "wannabe dictator" seriously. It's just political mudslinging. I figured that was obvious after Trump and Obama were all buddy-buddy at Carter's funeral. I mean, typically you don't have a friendly relationship with someone you think is ending democracy in your country.

What you're saying is that Democractic party leadership is so trustworthy that anyone they appear socially friendly with must not be a threat

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#197

Post by Intralexical »

whatshisface wrote: post #30
tomalaci wrote: post #10

These kind of policies and that amortization tax law for software development will probably encourage quite some exodus of talent. Would it be to Europe or South East Asia, though?

A large part of our talent acquisition would stay home, as the Asian countries, especially China, are expanding their investments. American students would go to work in European universities due to the lesser language barrier. When the US was a developing country a large number of children of wealthy families were sent to study in Europe. I don't think the idea of looking outside the US for knowledge would be natural…

I think at least some of them will come up to Canada. No language barrier, and close enough geographically and culturally to keep most of your connections. We pay less but live longer on average.

Seeing all this unfold is doing amazing things for our national pride, ironically.

Re: Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future

#200

Post by somenameforme »

tokai wrote: post #58
alistairSH wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could zero out the military budget and that still doesn't get us anywhere close to balanced. Even cutting 100% of discretionary spending barely does the job. We either need massive cuts in mandatory spending (fundamental changes to social contract) or increased revenue (politically not viable). There's also near zero evidence we actually need a balanced budget for a healthy economy.

>increased revenue (politically not viable) Is that really true? Seems like its just an issue of how you frame it.

This [1] is a graph of government receipts (basically all income for the government) over time. It has not only increased exponentially, but basically never decreased except during major economic crises. Yet somehow in that graph, we ended up more than $36 trillion dollars in debt.

It makes it clear that the fundamental issue is not government revenue, but government spending. Every single time you give the government $1 they find a reason to spend $1.05. Why would you expect this to change if you give them $1.05, instead of them now just finding a reason to spend $1.10?

I think that democracies are probably just fundamentally incapable of caring about long-term problems like debt when acting irresponsibly has substantial short-term benefits. It's almost like some spin on a tragedy of the commons.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGRECPT

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