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

Post by robotresearcher » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 12:08 AM UTC

prewett wrote: post #307

robotresearcher wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have to pay tax on unrealized gains with realized money? A classic problem with exercising employee stock options and holding the stock is that you have a tax event on the unrealized gain, but if the stock drops substantially, you still owe the tax money on the unrealized gain, but you cannot sell the stock for enough to pay for it. This happened to a lot of people around 2001. Paying for unrealized gains with…

Post by esseph » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 1:01 AM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #297

kevinsync wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As an outsider as well, I think the damage done will be hard to reverse in just a decade. You lost trust of your closest allies. Even after the current presidential term, why would we (Europeans, Canadians, ..) invest in ties with the US, when the _next next_ president can be an entire shitshow again? The American people have shown that they are okay voting for the same nationalistic rhetoric twice. If it was just on…

Post by insane_dreamer » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 1:10 AM UTC

sheikhnbake wrote: post #302

Insanity wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. I keep mentioning that to people when they bring up a quite anti-China narrative (or paranoia). Most people in the western hemisphere are way more likely to be negatively impacted by the US than China. Europeans, Canadians etc are less likely to travel to China so of course Chinese media spying would be less immediately detrimental than the spying of US companies. But even when traveling to China, it's les…

We in the US have been so propagandized against China that even relatively progressive people that are completely against the Trump admin think China is an authoritarian hellscape. And while China is obviously not a utopia, I'd be hard pressed to find a metric there that hasn't surpassed our own.

Post by actionfromafar » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 1:14 AM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #356

actionfromafar wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two countries can be shitty but the US hasn’t yet put a million of its citizens in jail because of ethnicity. Maybe going there in the future. That won’t white wash what China is.

It has put like 3 million, a quite a lot due to their social class. Disproportionately impacting a minority ethnicity in the process.

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 1:21 AM UTC

adev_ wrote: post #227

titzer wrote: 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…