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…
> How many of you software engineers want to sign up for high taxes? FWIW, I do. I don't live in the US, though.
U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
421–430 of 459 posts
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#423It'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.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice".
Not an applicable quote to parent. Everyone made a choice, but not participating is definitionally a different choice than participating and going along with a specific option.
By not participating, you are choosing not to care, despite the evident danger this may bring (and has brought).
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
A 36% tax?! Nobody's going to invest in that environment, since the taxes will really sap your effective compounding rate. That's a great way to push all your finance people out of the country.
I think you will find people are investing. And working.
Well, that's how it used to go, anyway.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
China has no free speech and will start flexing its imperial muscle more now that the US is climbing down from the world stage. China is alright if you keep your head down and you're not of the wrong ethnicity, locked up in a work camp and not allowed to have kids, or too openly gay or trans and so on.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Closer to 27%
The problem is that America returned power to a doubly-impeached, 34x convicted felon, where there were circulated photos of the boxes of unlawfully retained government documents he's stored in his bathroom and on the stage of a ballroom, and who was already known to hate all useful international institutions and who was already distainful anyone else's sovreignty.
That he added to this after the second election with the tariffs, visible corruption, sucking up to murderers, endangering our (by which, as a non-American, I mean every other nation's) security both directly and indirectly with both suggestions of military force against allies and also of refusing to aid allies when called for, plus all the ICE stuff we can see… that costs the US a lot of trust even if you can't reasonably blame the US electorate directly for failing to see that so clearly ahead of the actual vote.
All the second paragraph stuff though? That the electorate should've know from before the reelection? That should've had him in prison for the rest of his life, possibly even due to the stuff we heard about selling state secrets and under 18 U.S.C. § 794 getting on death row (which I disaprove of as a principle and call for the abolition of, but you in the US do have it), not returned to the oval office.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Sure, some PhDs are in underwater basket weaving and barely warranting the title. However, most PhDs are extremely valuable. They are pushing the boundaries of our knowledge to improve society. Some part of the hatred for the current academic system stems from legitimate concerns about how it operates. However, I think this hate is mostly driven by rampant…
foxyv says "most PhDs are extremely valuable" Can you defend this statement?
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This has nothing to do with funding. The US is spending $892.6 billion on the military, $11.3B on ICE, and planning to spend $400 million building a fucking ballroom . It's about authoritarianism.
Seems like a lot because it’s not a ballroom, it’s a bunker.
Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
I came here to see if the comments could explain to my why this obviously bad thing is actually good. Its somewhat comforting to see others worried about the implication. The fact is that governments (aka public funding) is really what drives the biggest most impactful sorts of scientific breakthroughs. Think: NASA spinoffs, the internet, rocketry, MRNA, etc. I know that the US has been failing to fund important thin…
Is it not a good thing that these folks could do something more productive in the private sector? Just on your Fusion example alone: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/31/every-fusion-startup-that-... Wouldn't it be better if companies like these had a larger pool of PhDs to pull from? Private sector does some things better, see Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, SpaceX, et al. This _is_ a good thing.
Measuring fundamental research by industry productivity standards is how we’ve gotten “publish or perish” culture and “salami slice publishing”. We have to allow space for projects to just fail in research and not have that be the end of someone because they weren’t “productive” enough.