211–220 of 540 posts
Article seems a bit biased. Similarly like some other ones where he cut research funding to then later resume it, with almost no significant loss, but the Democrats cried about it all over like if funding was completely stopped. They always tell one side of the story that fits the narrative. Just to be clear I am against this as well, just the journalism is so filthy now.
What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
Basic science is never cheap, but none of that money goes to the grad students. Then again, military weapons are indeed insanely expensive.
Source: I paid grad students the majority of my research funding for 16 years, and so did all my colleagues.
Unless you’re building a new facility at CERN, etc, the bulk of research cost is people.
What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ? Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead. Everything is changing. Including our influence.
That isn't really accurate, small drones are enough to antagonize regional neighbors. They are far from being able to project influence, stabilize international trade, or even remotely protect a territory from an enemy that isn't concerned with civilian casualties.
You mean like when the Zionists openly stopped food from getting into Gaza, while the western governments were backing the Zuonists? Those people concerned with civilian casualties?
An enemy unconcerned with civilian casualties, give me a break.
What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
Basic science is never cheap, but none of that money goes to the grad students. Then again, military weapons are indeed insanely expensive.
Idk what your idea of budgets are for these sorts of labs but I think most engineers would be shocked at the shoestring budgets they run on (at least the ones I know are a fraction of the cost of a single engineering team).
What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
It's clear that this is driven by performative climate denialism and a pro fossil fuel stance. The Trump administration made a billion dollar deal with an energy company to stop construction of offshore wind farms and redirect the investment into fossil fuel projects. Trump constantly talks about the "green new scam" and "climate alarmism". And on top of signaling to his base, Trump met with oil executives at Mar-a-Lago before the 2024 election and pitched them on rolling back climate regulation in exchange for $1B in campaign cash. Destroying the instruments that would document the consequences and might spark alarm and activism is one way to hold up his end of the deal.
What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
I’m sure this has nothing to do with 3.1 million graduate students versus 500 F-35s. For actual context, F-35 program receives $9B per year (amortized over lifetime), which is $3000 per year per graduate student. Erasing the F-35 program entirely would make something like a 10% difference in graduate wages, while destroying the US Air Force as a modern military. So no — your request to fund graduate students is more…
Later, after the math showing that graduate students as a whole are more expensive than the F35 program, you claim that the U.S already spends more on education and science than the military.
The claim is of course somewhat unclear, because what comprises science spending. Is Darpa science and not military. Does Nasa count as science in this claim? If Nasa does then it might be that you throw all the budgets of NOAA and the EPA and other similar organizations into the Science pile. I say it just because I am unsure how you are calculating one part of your budget. Actually the education part I am going to suggest that is just higher education.
Higher education is around 100 billion a year, without student loans which doubles that.
The U.S government spends also approximately a couple hundred billion for Science, if I am reading this correctly https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf26314 which does a lot of work putting government and business spending together which gives you a number essentially what the government spends on the military.
I can easily construct something that shows the U.S does pay more for science and education than it does for military, but only by being IMHO somewhat misleading, for example by throwing K-12 spending together with the higher education payments and mixing federal and state monies, so to clarify what I mean when I say the U.S in these kinds of conversations and what I think most people mean is "the federal government"
I suppose that the original poster also meant the federal government or it wouldn't make any sense to mention F-35s either.
Under this limitation I believe that the combined ratio of science and higher education is at best 0.8% of GDP and military is 2.8%.
Although it is not really possible to trust very much the data one receives from the American government any more so I am uncertain.
for example this document - I am just having a hard time to trust what data goes into these various parts as federal spending in that area.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
At any rate the military 2.8% I am quoting based on looking around is historically low. I would expect, especially given Iran, that it would be more in line with the historical 4.1%.
pgpf on https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-spends-more-o...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs. Many believed this, think about how many Americans do not understand the Progressive Tax system. I believe it has been intentional for many years to keep up some of these misunderstanding of basic governance.
I mean, I guess? I don't really feel like I needed to be taught that tariffs would raise prices. I'm not some hypergenius, it really seems pretty obvious to me.
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The administration wanted to eliminate everything ocean-related, seems like they are doing it program by program and this is yet another. Probably explains the lack of context, this is like article 20 about program closures (and maybe 200+ more to go)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs. Many believed this, think about how many Americans do not understand the Progressive Tax system. I believe it has been intentional for many years to keep up some of these misunderstanding of basic governance.
I mean, I guess? I don't really feel like I needed to be taught that tariffs would raise prices. I'm not some hypergenius, it really seems pretty obvious to me.
Or more practically and relevant to this? Number one Google search on Election Day? "Did Biden drop out?" Not the world's most informed electorate.