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U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

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Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#241
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Are usernames not anonymous? Is ICE checking your HN comments at the border?

> Visa applicants are required to list all social media usernames or handles of every platform they have used from the last 5 years on the DS-160 visa application form. https://ml.usembassy.gov/u-s-requires-public-social-media-se...

[deleted]

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re confusing two different questions. ‘Should we have more STEM PhDs in government?’ is a reasonable policy debate. ‘Is losing 10,000 STEM PhDs in weeks a problem?’ has a clearer answer… yes, because institutional knowledge doesn’t rebuild quickly. Also, there’s no evidence this was performance-based attrition. Lastly, recruitment becomes harder after mass departures signal instability. The burden isn’t on critic…

I disagree--we're all paying for it, so it should be justified regardless. And I don't need an optimal number. But the common refrain is essentially that more is always better, and fewer means we're losing our standing in the world. Always. Maybe keeping a lot of them but shedding some percentage is actually more optimal. But I'm open to being wrong. That's why I'm asking for metrics.

The US government operates with such a huge debt that we aren’t paying for these things. Instead we are paying for the long term effects of such spending.

Cutting 10k scientists could therefore result in increased taxes without anyone ever seeing any savings. Or it could result in net gain from 1$ all the way up to what their cost * interest in the debt.

Therefore there’s no obvious side who takes the default win here. Instead you need actual well supported arguments.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#243
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What problem are you hoping to fix by doing this? He/she is saying the quiet part out loud. It was never about illegal immigration. Illegal immigration is just the start. The underlying theme is xenophobia, racism and bigotry.

Even calling it “illegal immigration” lends fuel to the fire. There’s a very distinct difference between crossing the border illegally and violating the terms of a legally acquired visa or stamp. The latter is a civil matter which is why people weren’t historically rounded up and detained under threat of violence or murder. So yeah this whole thing is strictly about xenophobia being used to whip up the in group about…

There is also a third class of people lumped into the category: those who did everything legally and simply had their legal status abruptly revoked.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#244
post #231

The problem with these threads is everyone wants to complain about Trump, but support drops drastically when you talk about policies that actually help buffer against the far-right. Eg implementing robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance. How many of you software engineers want to sign up for high taxes? It's basically tragedy of the commons. Economics on its own is probably not…

This isn't a taxes issue. The assault on higher education and the sciences by this administration is inseparable from the assault on minorities and free speech. This is the authoritarian playbook 101. Mao went as far as locking up all the PhD's and sending them to work camps. Not taxes. Authoritarianism.

Yes it's a taxes issue, because that's how you pay for European-style safety nets. And again that's probably not enough either, cause Denmark/Netherlands are having issues with housing causing the far-right to surge. So you probably need Vienna-style public housing too. The US is so far from the correct solutions you're not even on the same planet.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#245
post #163

It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them. NSF budget was cut 55% in the first year. The administration is doing everything possible to make it clear that no foreigners are welcome here. America is stabbing itself directly in the brain.

> It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them If it’s harder to fund them then it should be easier to recruit them. I don’t think both can be true at the same time, unless you’re saying it’s harder to fund foreign PhD’s with US tax dollars in which case I think you’ll find limited sympathy for your cause.

> unless you’re saying it’s harder to fund foreign PhD’s with US tax dollars in which case I think you’ll find limited sympathy for your cause.

As your sibling pointed out, the end result is China benefiting from that void.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands is taking action against the brain drain by rapidly importing highly skilled migrants through various tax lowering schemes in the first five years of living here. However plenty of those people leave after that period. Especially with the upcoming 36% unrealized capital gains tax on all your savings and investments. Feels a bit like ISPs giving discounts to new customers only.

On unrealized gains, wait, what??

Why is this shocking? Surely if you hadn’t grown up with the very technical idea of unrealized gains, this would seem totally normal. The surprising thing is that we let ourselves be convinced in the past that making money with money should be tax advantaged compared to making money with labor.

Unrealized gains are gains.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#247
post #163

It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them. NSF budget was cut 55% in the first year. The administration is doing everything possible to make it clear that no foreigners are welcome here. America is stabbing itself directly in the brain.

> It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them If it’s harder to fund them then it should be easier to recruit them. I don’t think both can be true at the same time, unless you’re saying it’s harder to fund foreign PhD’s with US tax dollars in which case I think you’ll find limited sympathy for your cause.

Maybe I’m missing something, but why can’t it be true? If I’m a PhD deciding what to do with the next few years of my life, the fact that government jobs currently seem very unstable might make PhDs hesitant to choose this path. There’s probably also at least some PhDs (given the overwhelmingly left leaning politics of grad students) that don’t want to be involved with this administration. So maybe more PhDs are going into the private sector.

On the other side, budget cuts might mean that you have less money to spend on the PhDs that are interested.

So it doesn’t seem inherently contradictory to me.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#248
And this is only the beginning. Once the U.S. fully transforms into a China-like totalitarian state, complete with a social rating system and cameras for automatic payments everywhere, we will witness the collapse of educational institutions, the downfall of innovative companies, and an inability to address external multi-trillion dollar debt.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#249
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to.

Geely owns Volvo and IIRC a significant portion of Volvos are Chinese made now. There's a number of companies or brands that are now Chinese owned. China knows that home grown brands (like Geely) don't work on an international stage, so they buy well known brands like Volvo. It's a bit of a silent behind the scenes takeover but I'd say that China is now seriously making competitive cars. If you can follow the brands…

Lol, the fully homegrown BYD is destroying Tesla everywhere outside the US where it’s basically banned and you’re taking about Geely and Volvo and behind the scenes. It’s all out there on the stage.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#250
post #227
post #163

It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them. NSF budget was cut 55% in the first year. The administration is doing everything possible to make it clear that no foreigners are welcome here. America is stabbing itself directly in the brain.

European researcher here. There is an other thing that should make America worry. Research grants have been cut everywhere in the US. That cuts deep and terminated many scientific collaborations between USA and the EU Horizons projects in many STEMs research fields. That created a void.... and sciences is like nature: it hates void (and the lack of money...) My perception in the domain is that the resulting void is b…

You being an outside observer of my country, what do you think the mid-term (next ~decade) looks like if the US is somehow able to flush the toilet and do a complete 180 from a policy and administration perspective? I imagine even if people we need are welcomed back with open arms, they're not going to want to come. I sure wouldn't want to go back to a bar where the bouncer kicked the shit out of me!

Just curious, it's hard to see things clearly from inside the carnival.

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