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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

#231

Post by yodon »

Herring wrote: post #206

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.

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

#232

Post by yesb »

michelsedgh wrote: post #128
rwyinuse wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing current administration anti-science approach to things like climate and health, I wouldn't be all at surprised if many of those who left academia were ones producing quality work that just didn't align with Trump admin's ideology.

the unscientific stuff was actually past administrations which told us cheetos is more healthy than eggs and meat lol

If anyone is curious, as I was, where this misinformation came from: it appears to be a criticism of the Food Compass rating system from Tufts University. The connection to "past administrations" seems to be added by the person I'm replying to. They've also swapped Cheerios with Cheetos.

>On social media, I have seen graphics showing certain breakfast cereals scoring higher than eggs, cheese, or meat. Did Tufts create these graphics?

>No. Food Compass works very well, on average, across thousands of food and beverage products. But, when this number and diversity of products are scored, there are always some exceptions. These graphs were created by others to show these exceptions, rather than to show the overall performance of Food Compass and the many other foods for which Food Compass works well. But, as objective scientists, we accept constructive criticism and are using this to further improve Food Compass. We are working on an updated version now – see our versions page for more information.

https://sites.tufts.edu/foodcompass/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00381-y.epdf

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

#233

Post by badpun »

retired wrote: post #138
surgical_fire wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands had effectively full employment until a few years ago, last I checked. Unless things got dramatically worse in the past 3 or so years, I think you are massively overreacting. I happen to have a few personal friends that live there, for that matter.

I left mainly because of housing prices, the difficulty of being a freelancer, the 49.5% income tax after €78k, the 36% unrealized capital gains tax and just everything in life like supermarkets or public transport being so much more expensive than other European countries. I took a big pay cut moving to Southern Europe, but post-tax I earn the same and everything is just so much cheaper. I honestly have a significan…

Did you get a local job, or are you taking advantage of geoarbitrage via a foreign remote job?

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

#234

Post by mandevil »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #189
rwyinuse wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now I'm not sure there is a country where young people are generally satisfied and optimistic about their future. America is a mess, Europe is generally a mess, China is struggling with too many grads who aren't able to find jobs matching their qualifications... From what I've heard things aren't exactly great in India either. Every country has its problems.

Australians will complain a lot but honestly the future is very bright. Higher exports than imports, government debt isn’t completely out of line and it’s not going exponential like some regions, it has European like public services, a median wealth 2.5x that of the USA, good employment figures. It’s not perfect but i still think it’s pretty good.

But how much of the Australian economy is extraction for the Chinese economy? My brief understanding of the Aussie economy is that a large part of it is iron, hydrocarbons, copper, etc. going abroad, largely going to feed the Chinese economic machine. So economic performance is heavily tied into Chinese performance.

And the median wealth number is another way of saying "house prices are insane" right?

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

#235

Post by mike_hearn »

malfist wrote: post #97
JuniperMesos wrote: post #22

The implicit assumption that this is a bad thing is grounded in the assumption that anyone who is a STEM PhD is automatically someone the US government should want to employ, which I don't think is true. Academia is a badly broken system, and many people with formal credentials like PhDs have wasted huge amounts of time and effort on producing what is ultimately low-quality scientific work. This is a pretty uncontrov…

You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because some PhD students make "low quality science" doesn't mean we end academia. After all, who is going to do the high quality science if you get rid of all the scientists?

Lots of scientists work in industry. Look at AI, rocketry, semiconductors, drug design, robotics, anything related to manufacturing. Academics are in the minority in these fields. You could eliminate all such jobs and there'd be plenty of science being done.

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

#236

Post by thatfrenchguy »

TacoCommander wrote: post #17
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, so that we can loose our innovation edge and loose the next Apple, Google or Nvidia. Amazing plan.

A simple house in the South Bay is $2 million or more. Is this a win for humanity?

I mean, yes, the benefits (and sometimes harms) of those companies to humanity reach multiple orders of magnitude more people than the microcosm of the Bay Area housing crisis.

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

#237

Post by giardini »

toyg wrote: post #187
sanskritical wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people who will leave as soon as they feel their work environment has become even remotely uncomfortable are likely sitting in a comfortable sinecure, and it isn't the role of the taxpayer to provide sinecures for people with doctoral degrees. Government workers are meant to serve the government, and the government of the United States is By the People. The People voted for the administration and if someone c…

Your guy has armed goons with "absolute immunity" literally executing people in the streets, after threatening to invade neighbours and allies, appointing shockingly-unqualified loyalists at the very top of national institutions, and generally gutting the rule of law. It's a bit past "tolerating political disagreement", man.

Well, that went south quickly!

Glad to hear a British viewpoint now and then, but of course any problems stateside will be handled and voted on by Americans rather than Brits. Unless possibly you have dual citizenship (Brit & USA) perhaps?

FWIW Britain has plenty of history of what you term

"armed goons with "absolute immunity" literally executing people in the streets, after threatening to invade neighbours and allies, appointing shockingly-unqualified loyalists at the very top of national institutions, and generally gutting the rule of law."

You Brits almost have a monopoly on tyranny of various forms, having gone through most of them in bloody civil wars yourself. Hardly a model to follow, n'est-ce pa?

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

#238

Post by tasuki »

retired wrote: post #138
surgical_fire wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands had effectively full employment until a few years ago, last I checked. Unless things got dramatically worse in the past 3 or so years, I think you are massively overreacting. I happen to have a few personal friends that live there, for that matter.

I left mainly because of housing prices, the difficulty of being a freelancer, the 49.5% income tax after €78k, the 36% unrealized capital gains tax and just everything in life like supermarkets or public transport being so much more expensive than other European countries. I took a big pay cut moving to Southern Europe, but post-tax I earn the same and everything is just so much cheaper. I honestly have a significan…

> I left mainly because of housing prices

I understand you're not the landlord then. I agree this is a problem: the same(ish) earning you mentioned in another comment makes social mobility difficult. Some people are born with a house, others without. That's super unfair. I'd first tax that rather than income.

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

#239

Post by epistasis »

titzer wrote: post #193
motbus3 wrote: post #153

[flagged]

Yeah, it's a good strategy to tell people to be afraid and shut up whilst the AI learns from the most ignorant among us.

This is worth saying to protect those who are currently doing good things, but at risk of losing their job or funding if they say something.

Those who have nothing to lose: post away, please. Those most affected by this are the least able to speak up.

Freedom of speech rarely protected people's jobs, even in the best of times, but we are in the very worst of times right now for free speech.

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

#240

Post by kcb »

retired wrote: post #148
andriesm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On unrealized gains, wait, what??

Yes. Say you have €80k in investments. Markets go up, in one year time your investments are worth €90k. You did not sell. That means you had €10k in unrealized capital gains. Subtract the €1800 per person threshold. €8200, 36% tax is €2952 tax to be paid at the start of the year. Losses give you tax credits redeemable against future capital gains (not against income tax from employment)

How does that even work? What does it apply to? Say I own a 100% share in a business, each year does the government appraise it and pretty much require me to divest a portion of it to pay the tax?

Unrealized capital gains taxes are crazy all in an effort to own the rich or something. Meanwhile the people they're perceived as targeting have all the resources to avoid it.

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