WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants(scientificamerican.com) |
WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants(scientificamerican.com) |
This is far scarier than any single rule about research grants, and I'm not sure why nobody's talking about this.
The OMB writes the budget to enact federal policy. And critically, no federal regulation can exist with the OMB approving it. By making this appointment explicitly political, they have carte blanche to completely rewrite all federal regulations to be exclusively conservative ones. This would have been crazy to attempt before, but with Trump 2.0, this is the new norm.
One of the things they are doing right now (it's been approved and the rules are now active and legal, so it is now happening) is converting 50,000 civil servant jobs into political appointments. This means having a job in government no longer serves the whole nation, it's now an ideological function to serve a single political party. Literally weaponizes the federal government to punish opposing political views and enforce one view on everyone (there's no other point to political appointment). And if the party in charge ever changes, it now means everyone will be laid off and replaced. Every few years. So nothing will ever get done in government now, except for extreme short-term pushes for radical political agendas, because nobody will stay long enough to know how the government works to do anything else. Move fast and break things with the largest economy in the world, radical political agendas, and 380M people.
The OMB also can review and block all proposed legislation going to Congress, vet all official congressional testimony, and block any agency from publicly disagreeing with the President. Military generals, health officials, science experts, ecologists, intelligence directors... they can block all of them from giving any testimony to Congress. That's an actual power the OMB has.
They can also block money Congress has already allocated, meaning that your representatives in government are now completely useless, because whatever party is in the Executive can nerf anything your reps have passed. The Supreme Court could do something about it, but won't, because it's now a Conservative Supermajority. There is no reason for them to disagree because they already ideologically agree.
Finally, the OMB can issue a rule that every agency that wasn't officially under the Executive before, has to submit all its rules for Executive approval. Meaning the Executive would control all government agencies.
In any other context, in any other country, this would be called a single-party authoritarian coup. When they create rules that outlaw other political parties (that's what authoritarian governments do to retain single party control) - and assuming the democrats don't just give up - it will be the official start of civil war. Coming to you Fall 2028.
Not sure what you mean. Lots of people have been talking about it since he was appointed to the role. I've known about it and been pissed about it for quite a long time now.
Things can definitely get worse.
Sounds terrible, but is it? It incentivises high-impact research (otherwise politicians can't boast about it), and less research into trivialities that common sense says aren't worth the public funding.
Federal grants have always been subject to politics.
$2.4 million for "Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) Girls in a Robotics Leadership Project"
$1.2 million for "FW-HTF-R: Collaborative Research: Virtual Meeting Support for Enhanced Well-Being and Equity for Game Developers"
$700k for "CAREER: Advancing Equity in Middle School Mathematics by Engaging Students and Families of Color in Participatory Design Research"
Etc., etc., etc.
Sure, of course.
But to even ask the question presumes that politics isn’t already overriding science within the academy, just from a different direction.
This new direction turns the magnet around and pushes away everything else.
If you want to be independent of the government, don't take money from the government. If you are mad because you don't agree with how the government is making decisions, say so. But don't pretend it has anything to do with "government overreach"
Perhaps more political oversight will make research more accountabile to the population at large. In this era I suspect it's far more likely to benefit the few, those born into power and fame who are consolidating their power. Scientists with resources and accountable only to other scientists are uniquely dangerous to those unwilling to give up their power.
We may not like it (I certainly don't), but this is one of the times when Trump seems to actually be acting within his authority, and not pushing at or past those limits.
In your eyes, science and research is a linear process, governed by some "common sense", in which important and high impact discoveries are found as an immediate and direct consequences of the previous important and high impact discovery?
I'm trying not to get angry at a stupid HN comment, but surely we can think through what we write sometimes.
~ https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/03/basic-science-curiosity-...
Some just couldn't grasp the why, others understood perfectly well why their major donors wanted to squash studies on environmental stressors that might impact fisheries.
We could think of this problem as a slider from 0-100 where we allocate from 'none' up to 'all' our research budget to curiosity-driven research.
Political appointees having a say will likely move the slider toward the 0 (not necessarily to zero). I'm just not sure it's a bad thing.
Yes
> It incentivises high-impact research
It incentivizes work that sounds impressive to laymen. Actual work tends to be technical and might not sound super exciting.
If 20 years ago, a politician had to get up and explain that we were spending millions of dollars training computers to recognize a strawberry, likely the entire field of machine learning would not exist today.
> common sense says aren't worth the public funding
who is deciding what is "common sense"?
The first (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2116118) and third (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2144506) were approved as part of the NSF's Directorate of STEM Education, a still-ongoing initiative to ensure the US has a strong talent pipeline of upcoming scientists. It was and remains common for them to toss money at people with kids who otherwise might not be educated well in science; recent Trump-era grants include "Social Mobility through ARkansas Tech program" (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527972) and "STEM Journeys - From College to Career" (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527683). (I suspect we'll agree that the original examples are framed with strange racial overtones, which you could imagine legitimate political guardrails against even if the peer reviewers don't mind.)
The second (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2128991) is core social science research. Virtual meetings had recently become an extremely common phenomenon, and the investigators claim this led them to discovering (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2021.011...) the mechanism behind the then-novel phenomenon of Zoom fatigue.
It's a good example of "political types" making a song and dance based on "common sense" to save trivial amounts of money while making the health of marine systems opaque for the benefit of political donors.
That's a bad thing for people at large, and a good thing for polluting mega corps that want to privatise benefits and socialise costs.
How often does that actually happen, and wouldn't other institutions pick up the slack in most cases? (i.e. high value research doesn't cease to be high value just because one type of grant or institution refuses to fund it; it would therefore be attractive to other institutions/researchers)
Some benefits of having political appointees in the loop are that the pubic perceives (not necessarily 'gets') greater value from public research funding, and the people responsible for the funding (political appointees) are closer to the actual spending and are more involved in the allocative process, which should mean fewer expensive, hard-to-justify topics.
With this, I guess the US will end up as a third rate country much quicker.
Among other things this proposal attempts to prevent:
1. prevention of DEI related grants
2. prevention of grants promoting anti-american ideologies
3. prevention of gain-of-function research (think covid-19)
4. prevention of ai-powered social media censorship research
5. prevention of FEMA dollars going to help undocumented immigrants
6. prevention of foreign aid dollars being spent in africa on gender ideology
It would but restrictions directly into the grant awards give strong tools to the USG to suspend the grant and prevent the money being dispersed via a subrecipient.
Science should be guided by science, not ideology.
From a naive perspective, this sounds a lot like the breeding ground for Lysenkoism (Stalin-approved). In that example, aligning science to the party line led to a couple of famines. I say naive because there were other factors at play (e.g. it was forbidden to criticize Lysenko's theories).
So they’ll be sued. The theories will be tested and we’ll see exactly where the line is (eventually). And probably somewhere uncomfortable, given SCOTUS.
There are legitimate ways agency political appointees can set funding priorities. Like this year we’ll focus on Alzheimer’s. But of course, we should take the least charitable reading of this - that it’ll likely be used for shenanigans. Punish enemies. Award cronies. Go after junk science, etc.
So now the administration is attempting to follow those rules to create these new procedures, which they believe will then be lawful.
If they are successful, challenges would have to be made judicially based on non-procedural grounds, or through Congress.
They can follow APA to come up with all kinds of illegal rules. And the actual rules are so broad they could be used from anything sane to something that might be just political revenge.
The actual language:
> “As part of the merit review process, Federal agencies must perform pre-issuance reviews to ensure that Federal award proposals selected for funding are consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest.”
Example: "They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats."
Cancel Haitian grants. And also round them up in deportation holding facilities.
I can only say Bravo to Americans who think this constant fighting is somehow going to help the country.
My question is now: Which company is gonna buy the IRS now?
It is all fascinating to me.
I highly doubt you could do that in the US without being shot.
What is this, North Korea?
Having incentive to produce useful outcomes seems like it would be something folks would be in support of, but it appears many here think this is the end of the world just because it's Trump doing it. At least there's consistency in that regard. Le sigh.
Congress being neutered is not an accident, hopefully it will be less fucked if the power balance shifts.
And as the OP is inherently political in what it's calling out, that is not the motivation -- it's the science. I get the fact that in the end, everything's political but partisanship itself is a cancer on the body politic. Just as we seem to be in late-stage capitalism, we are entering late-stage democracy. It pains me that we effectively arrive here by choice.
Those are the only people who get to decide. Congress can’t turn over the expenditure of taxpayer funds to people who aren’t politically accountable.
Or I can be a chickenshit, and praise Trump and have a career, however pathetic. I routinely ask them to approve my results before publishing, just in case. I apply for grants looking at vaccines and autism. Every Friday, I spend an hour talking about how Trump is America's chosen one.
The executive branch does not hold the power of the purse, and the fact that you can casually use that phrase in reference to the executive branch shows how far we’ve fallen as a country in a decade.
A very sad state of affairs.
You say "career bureaucrats" as if they can't be fired or controlled, but that's obviously wrong (since they're being fired and/or controlled right now).
QED, they ARE still under public oversight. (1) Voters vote for (2) elected officials who oversee (3) agency bureaucrats.
Isn't congress the elected, public oversight body? Or are you proposing that each and every employee of the federal govt be elected to prevent the horror of the 'career bureaucrat'?
Voters can always choose to turn over those decisions to scientists they trust. For much of the 20th century, that’s what voters did. But if they don’t trust the priorities of the current scientific establishment, they can also choose to put that control back in the hands of political appointees. The institutional principles of science cannot override the prerogative of voters to decide how their money is spent.
FTFY
But then your counter is likely some form of originalism as you've been instructed. The current administration and it's pet SCOTUS have no interest in the Constitution or they wouldn't be so hell bent on making POTUS king for life. A mad king at that.
Well no wonder we're so fucked. The constitution is a disaster.
The upcoming midterms are very plausibly the last free and fair elections we will ever have in this country. As deeply unpopular as this administration is right now, the Democrats will need an enormous amount of luck for the size of historic landslide it will require to take the house and senate, and even then they need to do so by enough that they can impeach and convict.
That is just about the only plausible path towards preserving democracy at this point. And I’m not really holding out hope.
I’d be happy to be told that I’m wrong. So please, tell me I’m wrong.
I don't think Democrats will win the Senate this fall (though there's a chance they will, and I'd be happy to be wrong here). The House is reasonably likely. Either way, they won't have the supermajority needed to convict on impeachment.
Trump is doing a lot to try to destabilize elections and put his thumbs on the scale. His recent order telling USPS not to deliver mail-in ballots to anyone not on some list that the federal government is compiling is troubling. The SAVE Act is troubling, but fortunately still hasn't gained enough support to pass (though it's far from settled that it, or something like it, won't).
But I think a big strength in the US is that all elections, even for federal offices, are administered by the states. The federal government does have some constitutional say in how they're administered, but changes there generally require acts of Congress (which is hard, even with GOP control), and I expect any and all executive orders around election matters to be challenged in court, and hopefully largely thrown out. Red states will continue to do what they usually do to disenfranchise voters they don't like; nothing new there. Blue states will continue to be blue, and will do what they need to do to keep things as sane as possible. Purple states are a more difficult proposition, but there are few enough of them that it's easier for people to keep an eye on what's going on in them.
I think we'll know a lot more after we see what happens during the midterms (not by the outcomes, but in seeing what happens with the electoral process). I wouldn't expect the 2028 elections to be significantly different than what we see this fall. If the courts disagree with election-related changes the GOP have been trying to impose for this year, it's unlikely they'll be more amenable to them in two years.
I expect that the GOP (and MAGA folks in general) will reject the results of the 2028 presidential election if a Democrat wins. They'll dial up the "big steal" lies again, just as in 2020, and will push even harder with that narrative. Hopefully the law changes since then around vote certification will help avoid a repeat of all the crap we saw around that event. Will institutions stand up to that misinformation campaign? I'm not sure. I hope so, I think so, but I'm not sure. I'm cautiously leaning toward optimism.
Wait, maybe not that last one.
They've been doing this for like 70 years at this point and it's frankly a testament to how strong our institutions were that they're still kind of functioning, in the same way a 1999 Corolla you haven't gotten an oil change on since the Clinton admin is still kind of functioning.
And no I'm not going to do the song and dance for both sides. Yes, plenty of Democrats suck and I would love to see them ousted, but by and large the party consistently in power when the U.S. is in decline of it's own making is the Right. Something something facts don't care about your feelings.
I do not intend to live in a country where supposedly unelected organizations think they have independent jurisdiction to spend public money independently of the political system.
Marx’s idea of communism required a “dictatorship of the proletariat” as an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism. Lenin took that notion and, under the pretence of needing absolute power to prevent a counter-revolution, turned it into the totalitarian regime of the USSR. Since then, communism and totalitarianism have gone hand in hand.
Marx's "dictatorship" as used by Marx back in the days of late nights in the British Libraries wasn't the authoritarian "dictatorship" we associate with the term today.
In the 19th century, the term "dictatorship" did not yet have the modern connotation of an authoritarian, autocratic one-man rule. Its meaning was derived from the ancient Roman dictatura, a constitutionally sanctioned office for a magistrate granted extraordinary powers during an emergency. For Marx and Engels, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was not a specific form of government but a term for the class content of the state that would follow a proletarian revolution.
Sure, Lenin had a hard on for authoritarian behaviour and started the USSR trend of dangling a communist utopia as a reward for grinding through petty nitpicking committees and even more hard core authoritarians .. but that's more the bait and switch of human greed than any necessary coupling of communes and boot first hierarchies.
If Congress doesn't stop the executive and the Supreme Court overrules any legal blockades then ... I guess they can and are doing so RN.
Congress won't stop the executive because the party that won the executive also won Congress by almost 4 million votes. That's not a sign of the system not working, it's a sign of the system working as intended.
I remember when Nixon stepped down because his own party could not support his transgressions. The Republican party did this. That is a sign of the system working as intended.
You claim to be radicalized by a pair of lawsuits against Trump, like out of every legal issue he was entangled with it was those two that convinced you that the Democrats were evil?
Guess what? The Democrats suck and their party leadership is just as complicit in the protection of the oligarchy as the GOP's. But what happened with those Trump lawsuits wasn't a weaponization, it was blowback on a man who has been sued over 4000 times and has been shown to embrace criminal behavior when it suited him. Same thing with his two impeachments.
What I believe really radicalized you is the Federalist Society. And just in my other comment about how kids want to belong, so do adults (it's a human thing). And your desire to belong and be part of the elite power base you have put your lot in with the Monarchists.
Bear in mind that the founding-era practice originalism anchors to was voting rights for white male property owners. It took three constitutional amendments to override that. The Federalist Society's originalist framework treats those amendments as the ceiling — not a foundation for further expansion of rights. That's a methodology with predictable winners and losers, and I'd note you're unlikely to be among the winners.
This is one of many reasons why originalism is a weaponized mechanism rather than some noble hewing to principles.
The Constitution is what makes this country great -- being a nation of laws of mankind vs living under the whims of a monarchy of a god-gifted king.
effectively what became synonymous with communism just about everywhere
Curiously enough none of the Communist states
ever really transitioned from that intermediate state to full communism.
Much as, say, the notions of freedom, fairness, and making central north america great again has been a beard for robber barons.
At times they don't even cotify their subservience through the usual measures like legislation and committees, except where needed to slap down any roadblocks to the unitary executive.
It doesn't matter how aligned you are with his worldview, how much you vote alongside his wishes, if you aren't 100% loyal to him personally at all times you're politically dead in the Republican party in much of the US.
While Trump's ability to sway normal elections is next to non-existent anymore (see: the vast majority of special elections held since his inauguration where Republicans are getting roflstomped by Democrats), his endorsement still decides Republican primaries because there's still a lot of brainwashed Republican cultists on the Trump train.
My hope is tempered, to say the least.
The system is fundamentally broken.
The executive branch obviously is going to wield as much power as it can, but only one party is actually advocating for the executive as king.
So yes, both parties are the same when it comes to the corruption of the party leadership, but there are distinctly different platforms and ideals espoused -- and that difference matters.
We are never going back to where we were. That is past us now. There is only forward.
The FDR coalition was literally southern segregationists, immigrants, and black people, all in the same party. If "hate and stupidity" wasn't a barrier to people voting together in their material self-interest in 1936, it sure as hell isn't a barrier in 2026.
If you can’t tell, I am not hopeful.
Would he, though? I know the top US military brass have gone through some changes during this administration, but if the military sees a lawful impeachment and lawful conviction, I think enough would refuse (clearly illegal) orders to keep Trump in the White House.
Honestly I'd be more worried about the loyalists at the top of the FBI, US Marshals, Secret Service, etc.
Either way, it's incredibly improbable that Democrats will control a supermajority of the Senate next year (or, failing that, have enough Republican support to convict), so we probably won't have to find out what happens in this scenario.
The military executes clearly illegal orders to attack civilians on speedboats in the Pacific a couple of times a week. Not infrequently, they also kill the occupants when they are surrendering.
A fuckup or two like ICE had and the whole narrative quickly turns to shit and the people push back.
That of course is all setup for consent: Trump doing all that stuff is just fighting fire with fire, the justified means to the end of not only making America great again but now saving it from certain doom.
People are both more clever than you think, and dumber than you think. Few non-experts would claim to understand skyscraper design. And yet somehow everyone with a social media account and 4th grade literacy skills claims to understand how to govern 300m people and the largest economy in the world.
I don't consider myself a Jeffersonian Republican, but I can see clearly that tens of millions people voted for short-term action to fight against this or that perceived boogeyman, and did so largely from an emotional perspective with little foresight into what the consequences might actually be, beyond "X candidate says he will fix Y bad thing and I think Y is very important". The fact that 3-time Trump voters feel disappointed and betrayed and yet somehow still claim that Harris "would have been worse" points to a serious lack of unemotional big-picture thinking when it comes to the future of the USA. Hell I see people going all the way back to Obama -- "yeah OK so Trump did [100 unimaginably horrible things that will eventually hurt me] but Obama once hit a US citizen with a drone strike so what's the big deal? get lost snowflake god bless my president"
It doesn't assume that. It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. And the institutional principles of particular fields are subordinate to the constitutional structure.
What you're overlooking is that everything is just people. Political appointees are people. But "institutions" are also people. "Science" is just people. And the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent?
The only possible answer in a republic is that people accountable to the political system are allocated that power. People in the scientific establishment--people with degrees from universities and credentials from professional organizations--cannot be granted power to spend taxpayer money independent of the political system. They only have power over those decisions to the extent the political system chooses to confer that power.
However, the nuts-and-bolts day-to-day tactical decisions have before been made through expert peer review, by scientists. Given a fixed and finite budget set by Congress, what is the best way to make discoveries?
Having been on grant review panels, it's brutal--at 5 or 10:1 oversubscription rates, your peers will find any flaw in your proposal.
Political appointees are deeply unqualified to make these judgments. To take a very specific example: the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is headed by Michael Kratsios. He has a BA in politics and has never written a scientific publication. (Every prior OSTP head was a PhD scientist.) The OMB memo says he and those like him should decide what to fund without deferring to scientists. How is he going to assess which of 50 proposals on (say) "hypothalamic SH2B1 neurocircuits and SH2B1 signal transduction pathways" is the good one?
He can't, so he'll either choose AI or graft. Both are destructive to our once world-leading scientific enterprise.
Our laws actually are written to reflect more or less what I'm describing. The laws governing HHS grants, for example, provide for various expert committees and whatnot. But they also provide the appointed director of the HHS tremendous discretion to override those decisions. That's not new--those laws are decades old.
No one is debating that Congress has the power of the purse. That is one of their primary roles. They appropriate, but obviously cannot and should not make every detailed decision, particularly where expertise is required and political neutrality is preferred. Accountability is another primary Congressional role. That comes through oversight, not day-to-day decision making on behalf of those being overseen.
Even if it were desirable to have politicians making decisions in place of scientists, granting that decision-making power to political appointees instead of Congress actually undermines the public's representation and further shifts the balance of power to the Executive.
That's exactly what I meant when I said: "the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent?" The answer obviously is: political actors. Ultimately it's Congress. And sometimes Congress has delegated that role to the President.
Within that framework, the institutional principles of "science" are irrelevant, except insofar as those principles are persuasive to political actors and ultimately voters.
The problem scientific institutionalists face is that they've squandered a lot of public trust over the decades. The left is skeptical of revolving doors between expert agencies and corporations and corporate sponsorship of scientific studies, while the right is skeptical that experts' politics aren't coloring their work. And in such an environment, it's entirely within voters' rights to elect political actors who promise to delegate fewer decisions to scientists.
It's not that what's happening in the US with respect to science funding is not legal, it's just dumb. And, no, it doesn't have to be this way or that way because the constitution says so.
There are probably millions of spending decisions happening daily that are delegated, by elected or appointed officials, to non-elected or non-appointed people. In the scientific realm, spending decisions have been largely delegated to scientists since the end of WW2, and it's been very effective.
How many times has this administration blatantly ignored the Constitution, starting with, for a simple example, separation of powers?
You're all locked in on "scientists should be beholden to the government, as that is the lay and law of the land" which ignoring the rather large mote that is "this current government couldn't give one single fuck about following the laws of the land", like issuing directives to federal agencies to consider federal court rulings as "advisory" or "not final" or "not applicable".
When the corruption of the law of the land starts at the top, you're busy insisting that those trying to follow the stated intention of the institutions that employ them ignore that because, well, what RFK Jr or worse, Stephen Miller, are the way we do things now, law, constitution be damned.
There's no law that says "only scientists and subject matter experts can decide where grant money goes". Congress has largely left it up to the executive branch to set up a group of people, with whatever qualifications it wants (such as "loyal sycophant to the president"), to make these decisions.
I agree that this administration has taken a huge dump on the constitution, but that's a completely separate issue.
We can be angry that this what's happening, and adamant that scientists and experts should be making these decisions, but the people elected a Congress and President that wants to go another way, and that's how our system of government is set up.
We'll have to do better this November and in 2028 if we want to change things.
The question of whether scientists should have independence from the political system in deciding how to spend taxpayer funds is one that can be answered entirely starting from the principles of our republican government, without any consideration of what else the current administration may or may not be doing.
We'd have no choice but to accept that as a legitimate use of funding discretion, assuming that actually is the case (I don't know the law related to this, so I can't say). We can be upset at that decision, but we'd still have to accept it as legitimate.
People need a shared narrative of eg. a problem to solve, to come together. The right wing narrative today is deliberatetly targeted against any imaginary enemy, that does not subscribe to the narrative, which excludes/targets basically all left leaning people, all out groups. With this tribalistic setup in the centre, common ground is impossible.
You’d think democrats would come up with a compelling one.
But yes, he wielded populism masterfully. As you made a point about southern segregationists it should be noted that it was general economic populism without emphasis on race.
When Johnson championed the Civil Rights act it set the stage for the Southern Strategy where once race was a top tier issue that hate and stupidity was weaponized to move all of those segregationists to the Republican Party.
Rayiner, once again your point does not land because it is not cogent. Not only that, you missed the whole point of "hate and stupidity" as literally a unifying force as a tribal fury that is directed towards "others". In a contemporary case, it is against "liberals". I can only assume that you might have personal insight into this.
> When Johnson championed the Civil Rights act it set the stage for the Southern Strategy
The concept of the “southern strategy” is not cogent. The backlash against the 1964 civil rights act happened in the 1968 election, when Wallace won 13% of the vote and 5 states. But all the Wallace states voted for Carter in 1976, along with all the other southern states besides Virginia. The south was Carter’s base—he only won the election by 2 points and lost New England, the midwest, and the west coast. Then three of the Wallace states voted for Clinton in 1992, plus several other southern states. Clinton also wouldn’t have won without the south. Your theory is that the reliable republican lean of the south states in the 1990s due to events that happened decades earlier. That’s a stupid idea.
The realignment instead lines up with the transition of southern economies from agricultural to industrial/services economies, i.e., the transition from “the south” to “the sunbelt.” That economic strategy is based on siphoning jobs from the northeast and midwest through low taxes and deregulation. That’s why Carter still won all the “solid south” (except Virginia) in 1976, and Clinton still won three of the five Wallace states in 1992. Virginia was the first southern state to transition to a sunbelt economy, followed by the piedmont south, with the deep south states like Louisiana and Kentucky trailing behind.
why do you believe you and and your family (parents and sibling) belong in the USA?
>The problem scientific institutionalists face is that they've squandered a lot of public trust over the decades
The left generally trusts science and the scientific community, while the right has fallen prey to the right-wing war on science and truth. This war was explicitly designed to enable exactly what is happening here—the transfer of more power to the right, rationalized by a seeded distrust of institutions.
Hence, it's not surprising that the people who want political appointees in charge of science are on the right.
That's at best a misunderstanding of the GP's argument, at worst a bad-faith response. GP said:
> "the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent?" The answer obviously is: political actors. Ultimately it's Congress. And sometimes Congress has delegated that role to the President.
That is 100% correct. Congress controls spending. Congress delegated the details of that role in this case to the president, and the president wants political appointees making these decisions, not scientists and subject matter experts.
I don't like this state of affairs, but it seems to be an entirely legal one, consistent with the constitution and how our political system is set up. It sucks, but in 2024 the people decided that this is who they wanted in charge.
> The left generally trusts science and the scientific community
I'm not sure that's actually true in general. The left certainly is much more trusting of scientists than the right, but that trust is not absolute, and things have happened (like initial COVID response, as an example) to erode some of that trust.
> while the right has fallen prey to the right-wing war on science and truth.
Agreed.
No. Analyze the thread more carefully, particularly the original comment to which I replied. Should help any good faith reader to see that it's the opposite.
>That is 100% correct. Congress controls spending
You'll see that I actually introduced that fact originally to clearly delineate the roles, whereas GP was blurring / reassigning them to make his point. I added that Congress's other major role here is in oversight, which corrects the GP's assertion that political appointees are needed for accountability to the people. i.e. I'm saying that mechanism exists, Consitutionally. That destroys his primary argument—that this is about accountability.
You seemed to have overlooked that fact (in addition to my other points), in much the same style as GP. Perhaps his rhetoric has worked on you a bit here.
>Congress delegated the details of that role in this case to the president, and the president wants political appointees making these decisions, not scientists and subject matter experts.
That is not what's happening here, and reads like a complete misunderstanding or calculated twisting. The "in this case" bit is actively misleading. The OMB already executes spend management. There is no special "case" here. The regime is using the OMB to politicize the process by claiming it was partisan—i.e. using the same well-worn tactic in its ongoing attack on science and other matters.
>I'm not sure that's actually true in general
Of course it's true. Statistically.
>that trust is not absolute
Never the assertion. Immaterial.
>and things have happened (like initial COVID response
In fact, the left experienced a temporary bounce in scientific confidence during the initial COVID response, before settling down to pre-pandemic baselines. Meanwhile, the right experienced a roughly 20 point drop in confidence that has persisted.
If you are politically connected, or stay in an narrow lane of approved work, you get your grant. But if you stray from the politically approved path, or appear disloyal to our First Citizen and the Party, then your grant will be canceled.
The remaining supporters of the incumbent party like to claim that they aren't actually doing anything worse than in the past, and if anything they are just cracking down on things that they see as subjectively bad, so it's fine. And there's an element of truth in that: so much of American policy for a long time has been subject to agency interpretation and judicial review, and there was always room for political maneuvering and corruption in the system. Where the truth becomes a lie is the omission that this is the systematic ramping up from something that happens occasionally in a mostly-functioning system, to something that happens constantly and is systematically designed to facilitate corruption and politicization.
It is unbelievable to watch my country give up its most unfair (and yet mostly positive) advantage -- a nearly free option on the top talent of the entire planet. Here's hoping that the increasingly multipolar research world can find ways to be even more efficient in creating new knowledge.
what about private companies making profits luring researchers?
Well, not all research is publicly funded. I think private funding is still fine for the most part. But yes, public research is dying a painful death.
Outsiders like to imagine that the pure pursuit of science without any agendas is what university research is all about. That is mostly a veneer.
ETA: Slightly off topic, but a colleague had his already-granted NSF grant killed by DOGE because it contained the word "censorship". He was researching ways to allow Iranian people to bypass their regime's Internet censorship.
We created laws to prevent this from being the case. They work(ed) most of the time.
The current administration believed that it didn't have to follow those laws. After being slapped down multiple times by courts for this, they want to change the law(s) so that what your father said becomes true. But worse - "what the administration gave you last week, they can take away next week".
Also as someone who lost a grant from this administration for supposed DEI (it was fucking biology, but ignorant fucks didn't give a shit), I also want to say fuck them.
What could go wrong?
Definitely not more corruption.
Definitely not more uncertainty that kills gross fixed capital formation.
That's how its always been, it's just that most people are not attuned to academic politics.
I don't think any practicing scientist of any political persuasion will think these are good for science.
Science progresses by sharing knowledge openly and publicly, so others can evaluate it, criticize it, and build on it. These severe restrictions on collaboration, publication, and public communication will damage science's naturally open, merit-based culture.
We will all suffer due to lost discoveries--maybe not today, but over years and decades.
Look at Russia, they jumped off a cliff to protect a regime from democracy, and people are checked out - they take no accountability and still act confused of why Russia is being despised - all while accelerating economic and demographic decline with more than one million casualties in a special 3 day military operation.
You can't make this up.
The flagrant corruption and voter suppression efforts underway at the moment make the next 2-3 years the final chance to bring it back from the brink. That doesn't just mean a Democrat winning. It means an actual democrat (lowercase) winning and building a coalition to repair what has been broken. I don't personally think that looks very likely, but I hope for all our sakes it can happen.
So was it a clear eyed critique of government policy or was it just idiotic support of fascism?
There's a dude in this thread openly supporting cronyism in government and there's been a general undercurrent of open contempt for democracy, so we can't really assume good faith and sanity from people.
How the Russian interests have taken over significantly invalidates the purpose and existence of the FBI, CIA, and NSA.
But then again, President Biden's administration had multiple grounds to prosecute Trump for crimes committed, whether the attempted coup or espionage with top secret documents or Epstein, and they just did not make it happen in a way that had any effect.
Hope china can step up and fill the gap.
The amount of capability that America is burning is impressive. I suspect that people outside of academia are not as alarmed, since its not part of daily life.
However it matters the same way that a drug discovery today is life saving 10 years down the line, after its gone through all the processes to go to market.
Reply by Ben Franklin, when asked about what kind of govt the newly independent United States should have. The words seem particularly fitting in current times.
If these rules go into effect, is it not true that individuals, state governments, and non-governmental organizations could still fund scientific research that the federal government won't fund?
Of course there's still research that only the federal government could fund. A big example is e.g. DARPA and the Internet. Imagine if that was only funded and supported by a few states.
This administration’s actions towards Harvard and other schools would suggest not. If a state or university is doing verboten research, the federal government can make them stop. Previously, that didn’t happen - it was unthinkable. Now, it’s forever on the table.
Science and Educational purposes are valid 501(c)(3) purposes. A donation to a 501(c)(3) that funds open-source scientific software, public STEM education, basic research, science grants, or public-interest tech research can be deductible.
Up to 60% of Adjusted Gross Income can be tax-deductible as charitable contributions to a qualified 501(c)(3) with itemization, depending on the contribution type.
This would create a non-partisan defined/dedicated non-profit funding layer with serious governance that will benefit all sides. Might be possible to go global.
This would need serious structure: independent board, conflict-of-interest rules, grant review, public reporting, no private benefit, and probably fiscal sponsorship first.
Maybe this deserves a separate Ask HN to avoid derailing this thread: would people here actually support or help design a 501(c)(3)-style vehicle for public-benefit science and technology funding?
How can anyone realistically plan resources, staff, whatever, if they have no idea it’ll be funded for a month or 20 years? They really want to destroy American ingenuity, science, all of it.
Just a bunch of white nationalist drones existing to keep the engine going is what they want.
This is not just picking which ideas the government supports. This sounds like it’s taking all the “fun” out of having grant funding.
Sure, that’s a flip remark, but doesn’t this have a similar sense of arguments against other government funded programs?
~SNAP food assistance is raising food prices~ [1] or ~SNAP food assistance is my tax dollars going towards anyone who says they’re hungry.~ [2]
And don’t forget to mention the replication crisis.
~Public funded grants let scientists go to parties and publish junk science.~
The cynical would argue it’s proof the scientific community is filled with charlatans milking a system that can’t police itself.
- With no workers working, no worker fraud problem, sure. If you cut core scientific processes, politicize science, and destablize paycheck predictability enough to chase everyone good out of science, then yes any small amount of waste is also caught in the cuts.
- This seems to increase what you call bad "fun": Increases abuse of tax funding being corruptly given to projects advocated by political appointees despite rejection by scientific peer review. Vicious feedback loop.
Surprise! I'm just a middle-age American reading HN with his coffee trying to wrap my head around the topic. I don't think this remark helps anyone understand your argument. Doth protest too much.
I'm wondering if you're focused on the "approved" science, and missing the idea this corruption is riding on the back of even a "small amount of waste", and an overall rejection of scientific activities in the face of the replication crisis. All part of the schism of your facts and our facts insanity.
You could argue peer review has become a mechanism to encourage incrementalism. That it doesn’t reward big leaps. And the public isn’t getting ROI on science funding compared to 50 years ago.
Peer review is a closed system of expertise that doesn’t let you challenge the core tenants - some might say theology - of the field. It’s basically a cartel for keeping a field of study alive, regardless of its value. True innovation happens when people collaborate outside their fields.
Steelman aside, there probably are better ways to solve this problem systematically than just let a politically appointee have final say. If we were serious about this problem, smart people thinking about scientific policy probably have some great ideas that are not being listened to.
Strong claims require strong evidence. The tenants some people want to challenge are climate change, gender identity, renewable energy, vaccinations, etc.
So its a hard bargain, I believe science benefits from being a bit stubborn.
And I’d argue all fields could use more dissenting opinions and new options. I don’t know if this would be the path to that but keep in mind there have been many things historically where someone needed to take a leap of faith to go against the current dogma.
Are you arguing that or not
Also: tenets
>some might say theology - of the field
Some might, I'm sure! Are you saying that?
https://www.lesswrong.com/w/steelmanning
Personally, I am sympathetic to the idea that science has stagnated. But I do not think this is the solution.
This is a case of correctly diagnosing the problem - but not actually having a real solution
it will take longer than this decade, maybe even next, to restore the brain loss and faith in secure jobs for research
basically this country will just become a highway of non-stop warehouses, alternating ICE prisons vs "AI" datacenters
science, medicine, all research and development just gone to other countries
(Unless you're doing science for military development. Then the funding spigot is open.)
And to those who say "oh, it's the same as it was before, just different ideologies" -- no, it is not at all the same. Not even comparable.
The Trump 2.0 administration was already easily the most corrupt in American history well before these rules were proposed.
To their credit(?) they don't even try to hide it, they are just fully corrupt out in the open, because they know the cultists who support them will support anything they do.
In fact, "unelected bureaucrats" have been the key to whatever degree of success this democracy has enjoyed. Politicizing everything replaces non-partisan expertise with political loyalty and favoritism. It's a direct path to the destruction of critical institutions, undermining the public trust, and authoritarianism.
They want to turn this place into a the real life version of idiocracy? So be it. The lay voter needs to see what voting badly does. They need to see consequences. The cure for cancer could be there in this research. WHO knows what could become of real mRNA research. But no. We just want to believe the world is 6k years old and some donor is gonna tell some begging scientists they get their funding or not.
On the other hand, if we can't get private citizens to donate to science research, then they are not likely to vote for it either--polls don't register much of a concern from the average citizen*. I don't think most of us want to be under a dictator or go back to having a king.
That means the only practical option is to act of our own volition and support science through vocal advocacy and private money. In this way, we can each donate to the research we care about the most with maximum academic freedom.
* https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.asp...
Everyone knows that many things that are not directly beneficial to society would go unfunded because humans optimize for what’s around them, and things that are self-interested.
There isn’t even alignment. One person wants to fund science, the other wants to fund high speed rail, the other wants farm subsidies, one wants social security and the other wants the military. Government balances all of that together. Of course people will make value judgements about their pet interests and declare the other aspects to be better funded separately.
The USG is quite often the only group able and willing to fund most projects.
Contrary to what you said, there is actually quite a bit of private philanthropic funding for research, it's just that it's not evenly distributed. The vast majority of it seems to go to medical research, in particular cancer and Alzheimer's. That's obviously a good thing, but my point here is that we can't necessarily depend on private philanthropy to distribute funds optimally.
https://www.cato.org/blog/governments-should-not-fund-resear...
I'm generally a fan of Cato and a libertarian approach to economics, but I'm still not convinced that we should be spending zero public money on basic research. I would like to see a decent amount going into mathematics and theoretical physics for example, and I doubt those fields would stay afloat on donations.
This comment reflects a level of ignorance that would make Dunning & Kruger facepalm.
The idea that you compare a democratically elected government’s taxes… to that of an unelected tyrant show a complete lack of perspective.
Do you mean that the EU spends 1/10th that, rather than Europe? Because France, Germany and the UK all spend €100-150bn each in grants depending on how you set your definition, and that’s atop the EU’s grant money.
Just eyeballing the figures across different countries, it looks like the USG distributes approximately the same amount in grants per capita as the EU & UK. Certainly not a 90% diff.
If the choice is between $0 in the US and >$0 someplace else, you emigrate to >$0 if you want to continue your research.
Way off, it's way closer, even if we're just talking EU. EU (the body) alone is about 200 billion/year. EU member states are like 1-1.5 trillion/year.
US: $848B (2024)
EU: $508B (2024)
---
UK: $102B (2023)
Switzerland: $22B (2023)
Norway: $8.2B (2024)
OECD "Gross domestic spending on R&D"
We fund science, research and we have accelerated programs for researchers affected by these kinds of things.
If you're interested, email me (see profile). I have been helping Americans emigrate to Europe (for free) for several years.
If you spend $900 Billions on BS you will lose to other countries that only spend 1/100th of that.
Quantity over quality doesn’t work in science because reality doesn’t care who paid how much.
I know a lot of hay and media exists about how academia is yadda yadda biased and anti intellectual. But of course a lot of that is cherry picked examples of controversial figures or individual missteps among individual institutions. This is a bit like taking a classroom with one rowdy asshole and then declaring the whole school must use physical violence as discipline from now on.
Edit: don’t forget how he’s forcing NSF headquarters to move. All the NSF, not just the “bad” research.
Almost everyone has entertained the idea of leaving the US for more stability, which is required for research.
But these very endowments have been special cased as additionally taxable, despite that status, under the 2025 OBBBA, resulting in research budget cuts [0].
Would independent endowments as you describe them be more immune?
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/college-endowment-tax...
Why a hypothetical? Plenty of options available to donate to or to contribute otherwise. Not help built it, help grow and maintain it.
It's not true, because The people who want power will just make a typo—or do a stupid keyword match—and now Harry Buttle is gone. They have no incentive to be consistent or accurate.
Aside from that, so much money was wasted on Alzheimer's research based on fraud.
Consensus is a thing, but science is not one institution, is a bunch of different warring factions of people trying to get published and cited and funding.
I want a competent government who directs the funds in an appropriate way. Not one who sets up a shush fund, using my (tax) money, to pay their private army of thugs.
The bigger issue is failure to significantly increase r&d funding, vs last decade+ shrinkages and Trump-era eating of the young, and focuses like you now propose suggest a continuation of such economy-inhibiting thinking. Also, note how your post was goalpost moving. This in turn is classic trolling with asymmetric effort, so I don't see your response in good faith.
I feel like I commented on someone’s marriage. Peace.
Both are bad, but one allows some diversity; the other produces a monoculture.
A political monoculture that can be completely upended before even any useful crop is grown, given the nature of a working democracy versus the length of research projects.
And yes, I'm aware that those last two words are no longer guaranteed.
Unfortunately, getting money from industry isn’t much easier in my opinion.
We have some software projects we want to spin out into a small business or non-profit (because federal funding…), but industry is absolutely cold right now. Had a few very promising partners lined up, but it all evaporated last spring. Between tariffs, AI spending, and now oil, everyone is reluctant to spend.
i also think the importance of grants is a bit academic, so not a day to day concern.
I understand that there are people in the US who do not think that this is important and actually would prefer fewer scientists that are more poorly trained. There is nothing more infuriating then believing the world is flat and having some egghead prove it isn't.
I expect you are right at the most specialized end of the spectrum (and certainly industrial labs in those areas), but I wonder if anyone can speak directly to where we are still globally competitive.
But for bringing elite minds from outside the country? Heck no. Sure, for the right price they will come, but few want to bring their families to actually stay. Ask someone like a surgeon or physicist whether they want to work in the US or Canada/UK. They will say something like "ya, to make bank for a few years, but long-term I would rather live in Toronto than New York, Vancouver rather than Seattle." The perception of the US by people outside the US is not something America pays much attention to these days. It is suffering.
I mean yeah, but some of us are old enough to remember how the consensus was that the world was done with America because of Bush, but then Obama got elected and suddenly it was all forgotten.
outsiders like... their immediate family back home?
https://clearedjobs.net/guides/security-clearance-foreign-co...
>> A foreign national spouse who is a citizen of the United Kingdom will be evaluated very differently from a foreign national spouse who is a citizen of China or Russia. Both must be disclosed fully, but the national security concern level is substantially different. Applicants with significant ties to adversarial countries face more intensive investigations and, in some cases, may not be eligible for certain programs even if their individual loyalty is not in question.
Even without this mandatory polygraphing and the absurd rules around lifetime drug use are enough to rule these roles out of contention for many.
I mean I'm not inherently opposed to laws or government, but I think a lot of people need to be more measured and considerate of what they are using tax money for when it is being taken from their fellow citizens at gunpoint.
using grep to defund grants that contain words we don't like is the exact opposite of measured and considerate. so is punishing scientists for the sin of working for a 'woke' institution. in fact all this seems extremely punitive, and not in the spirit of optimizing outcomes for costs at all.
note that this policy explicitly removes the requirement to provide any kind of rationale. that sort of directly contradicts the notion that this is a measured discussion about priorities.
Believe it or not, it's possible to hate both Kash Patel/Kristi Noem and the unelected bureaucrats burning tax money on awful research.
https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/NSF-Terminated-Award...
I wouldn't even need to cherry pick.
Appears it didn't receive any funds since 2022 after being extended for years (so your "daddy" is Biden) and wouldn't get any more money so was canceled to get it off the books.
If anything this shows the list includes regular grants that were canceled for normal reasons, which further demonstrates the cuts were not of real science.
Culture Change for Inclusion of Indigenous Voices in Biology
Strengthening Inclusion by Change in Building Equity, Diversity and Understanding (SICBEDU) in Integrative Biology
An Equitable, Justice-Focused Ecosystem for Pacific Northwest Secondary CS [Computer Science] Teaching
Great to read these are being defunded.
Scientists have two easy avenues if they are currently in the US, the US or their home country. Immigration to work in a foreign nation is not always easy and takes time.
That’s it. Just offer the people what they want and stop catering to the ownership class.
Let me remind you any of you could run for a seat. You don't need to belong to any political party. You can even rise through the ranks inside a party. Trump is even an example of a complete outsider turning upside-down one of the two main parties!
Your complaint sounds a lot like "we tried nothing and we ran all out of ideas".
just as well you can say the wealthy people our government caters to also have a clientele mentality. and they get most of what they want.
populists are running for more seats these days and they’re winning so maybe there’s hope.
It seems very easy to just blame this on the voter like this.
People decided to elect that person, it's part of the package.
So I don't know. Assuming the American voter can read and and access to the internet, it's kind of pathetic to imply they couldn't have known
If you don't my asking, was your wife's profession, rather than her income directly, taken into account significantly? Thanks again
[1] https://prepareforcanada.com/blog/managing-money/financial-f...
With a few exceptions like Switzerland, American levels of compensation for highly qualified people just can't be matched anywhere in the Western world.
Saudi Arabia or UAE maybe, but these don't even try to pretend to be socially and politically liberal.
Gross compensation yes. But if you begin deducting stuff like the absurd American housing costs, private healthcare, saving up for deductibles, the need to own, insure, fuel and maintain a car to do everything because almost nothing is accessible by public transport, retirement savings, everyday stuff such as restaurants being made much more expensive than what's on the paper because of mandatory tipping, saving up for your children's academic degree while paying off your own student debt, hell saving up for having a child (just the birth will be 20k out of pocket [1]), saving up for times of un(der)employment... suddenly most of Europe becomes pretty affordable if you are not on FAANG levels of compensation.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-have-a...
It is 100% possible for me to have a high salary in the US and save most of it while temporarily exposing myself to larger risks. And it is far more useful for me to be able to say and show that I have a high salary, for access to credit and resources, private investments that give me the best shot of escaping a permanent underclass.
Of course, I don't want to budget, nobody wants to given the choice, so I pay for the conveniences and assurances that I can afford.
But even if the margins are smaller, the absolute numbers are great. If you aren't living paycheck to paycheck due to debt and lifestyle inflation, then you are really saving thousands of dollars a month. potentially many thousands. a single one of those is enough to travel around the world, it's just the irony that we have to come back to the US very soon in order to continue making that money. its enough to attempt to make a homerun in our capital markets on a equity name.
So, sorry commonwealth and Europe, you really don't compete on that front for people that don't already have capital. The wages are just too low.
In fact, the wages are ironically sooooo low that their main selling point - social welfare - is at parity to Americans on welfare! Who do have healthcare without premiums in some states, subsidized higher education in some cities, and more. So the systems aren't really as different as billed. Saying it another way, a European/Commonwealth citizen making their same salary in USD would get the same benefits in some parts of US, just losing all of their social standing in the process.
And finally, when Americans do earn their freedom back, with unlimited sums of money, Europe and Commonwealth countries once again become uncompelling, because the US has a more expensive, larger, funner version of everything those countries have to offer, while our US Gentry experience a different form of social welfare supporting themselves.
The incentives to really exit the US system aren't quite there. As another person mentioned, Switzerland is closest. Switzerland and schengen access is pretty appealing to me as well.
They weren't. Our highly taxed and relatively stagnant economies are more affordable & attractive for poorer people, but the well-paid professional class was simply better off in the US. Especially with some optimizations, such as: get your professional degree for free in Germany, then move to the US for its high salaries without a debt to pay.
If you weren't aware of these differences, I'd encourage you to radically change your media diet; there are unfortunately many outlets which find it advantageous to exaggerate how bad the US is and deemphasize how bad dictatorships are. (Some are paid Russian propaganda, I've seen a shocking number of people send me RT links as though they're a legitimate news source.)
But those four puppets served the same ruling class interests, and they manufactured consent for each other the whole time.
I also struggle to see how it can be that different Presidents with often directly contradictory policies could both be serving the same ruling class interests. If the funding rules for scientific grants are changing, and defenders of the old rules argue that this is a terrible change that will cause huge problems, how can it be that both the old rules and the new rules serve the same interests?
In the US you might get your funds cancelled, in Russia you'll get your life cancelled instead - and not in the metaphorical sense.
Also as incompetent as the current US government is, the incompetence of the Russian government is on a whole different level (the "3 days to Kyiv" are taking longer than the whole "Great Patriotic War").
> Russia is a de-jure democracy
As is North Korea, it must be even more democratic than the rest of the world because it calls itself "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" ;)
Trump and Hegseth are explicit in their admiration for Putin and Xi. So being technically right here is largely to miss the point. The trajectory the US is on is pretty clear.
Just pointing out that Putin has systematically turned Russia into a full-blown fascist autocracy, but even in Russia this took nearly two decades until all opposition was crushed.
MAGA has the same goal (turning the US into a fascist autocracy), but I bet it will be much harder and would take much longer to dismantle the checks-and-balances system in the US as completely as Putin did in Russia.
That's why they're considered a rogue state at the moment.
So at best you can say the Russian regime claims Russia is a democratic, that's not de jure, because for it to be de jure you'd need institutions to make sure it was in fact de jure.
There's none, just signs with the name on the wall, and people roleplaying.
> I'm not sure what difference there is between them.
Good hyperbole
America is not exceptional.
Well, now with Trump and his madness, suddenly Europe or Canada become a lot more attractive. It simply is not worth it any more to stay in the US, and if the Democrats don't make a landslide in the midterms... get the fuck out as long as you still can.
Europe spends more on academic research than the US, both in absolute terms and as a fraction of GDP. (The US spends more on R&D in general.) European academics are also less dependent on government funding. While European old money has long found it prestigious to fund arts and sciences, US donors are more likely to fund education or buildings.
European academics have continued to immigrate to the US, mostly because there is less competition for resources. It's easier to get a faculty position or a grant in the US, because you are competing against fewer people. Because academic jobs are worse in the US relative to the alternatives, fewer Americans are willing to pursue an academic career. That leaves opportunities for immigrants who have already chosen the academia and are willing relocate.
BTW your “believe it or not” is quite condescending. Do you talk to people in real life like that?
>BTW your “believe it or not” is quite condescending. Do you talk to people in real life like that?
Yes, especially when they're the sort of people who support taking my tax money to fund idiotic and outright racist "research".
If that sounds absurd… you’re right! It is!
Russ Vought was not elected either.
If you're very young, single and childless, sort of. You can pick the lowest tier of health coverage from your employer which is often fully covered by the employer and have no other major costs. If you're young and single and healthy this can work out. Of course, if you have some kind of accident or medical emergency, expect to be bankrupted, which is not how it works in other countries.
But once you have to cover childcare and school and university, and the lack of time off for parents (add expensive babysitters on top of daycare and school) and pay for good medical coverage for a whole family and of course contribute maximums towards retirement because social security won't be there and so on. Suddenly that large gross salary is mostly gone and what little is left over isn't very different from what may be left over from a much smaller salary in a different country.
And of course here in the US we get to work our nice 60 to 80 hour weeks instead of a regular 40 hours and disconnect from work. And we might two weeks vacation, if you can afford to take it, instead of 4 to 6 weeks.
That is hardly the norm, if you work in the hottest AI startup or some field of quant then sure, but average SWE do work the same 40 hour week. Lack of paid vacation is true tho.
European companies could offer higher salaries with a wholesale structural adjustment in their culture, and the US could offer healthcare higher education and child care in a wholesale structural adjustment
But right now the wrong things are different to really be compelling to tale advantage
That's the thing. Temporarily. Sure, you can save on healthcare with a high deductible and in-network-only plan. But then, all it needs to wipe you out is a bad traffic accident - say, you run a red light by accident, get t-boned at high velocity and airlifted to the next hospital. You're at fault, the hospital is out of network, the HEMS ride isn't covered anyway. Your car is toast, you're out of work for months and fired sooner than later.
In Germany? HEMS is covered by your health insurance. You get full pay for 6 weeks (and 70% afterwards) while out sick. Your boss can't (realistically) fire you without an insane lot of effort that most don't bother. All in all, you only have to eat the cost of the totaled car.
It really depends on your situation. I am living alone in an apartment that costs 60% of the median rent in my metro area and my generous healthcare plan ($1500 deductible, $3000 max OOP) is fully paid by my employer, short and long term disability insurance paid for by my employer, and my car will be paid off in 3 months. I am able to save around half of my income, but my sister and BIL have three kids and a house and they spend almost all of their money. Their combined income is probably 2.5-3x of what I make, but by myself I have a higher net worth than them. They’ll probably surpass me in net worth once they can stop paying for daycare and get their student loans cleared, they just have a lot of expenses I don’t.
I did just that in a sibling comment. 80k is upper class in Germany, solid middle class can be achieved at 60k.
> I also struggle to see how it can be that different Presidents with often directly contradictory policies could both be serving the same ruling class interests.
Using the polarizing topic of COVID (whose risks remain in 2026) as an example, we can answer both of your questions:
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...
Which ultimately led to:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.hous...
This can be applied to virtually any topic. The party of "good cop" and the party of "bad cop" promise no change from the status quo. Of course, anybody easily distracted by the culture wars will not see the commonality between both corporate parties, by design. These people see a close election and use that as "proof" we still have a functioning democracy.
People who are concerned about "corporatism" have the same problem. I often see them get confused and frustrated when the news presents "big government" as a scary thing that people are worried about - doesn't everyone know big business is the more important concern? Most Americans don't agree with them (https://news.gallup.com/poll/701054/perceived-threat-big-bus...), but if all your friends think big business sucks and government programs are great, it's hard to know that this is something you should check.
/r/ZeroCovidCommunity continues to be growing community for good reason.
Yes, for FAANG during Covid and now AI.
But your average SWE? That's more like 130k in the US [1] vs 61k in Germany [2]. In Germany, that's about 3500€ net (after taxes, retirement and health insurance - that is deducted from gross wages here) per month, of which you spend about 1500-1800 on cost of living (in Munich, the most expensive city in Germany by far), so about 1700-2000 in disposable income. You don't need a car because everything is walkable and a flatrate for all public transit across Germany is about 63€ a month.
Let's do the math for the US, California. Net pay is 87k/y or 7250/mo [3]. Of that, subtract ~600$ for a PPO plan (it's still not as good as Germany's default which does not have anything comparable to "in network", but good enough) and ~200$ for an average 2400$/y deductible. A 10% contribution to a 401k, 725$ a month. 2500$ for a 1-br apartment [4]. Now add in 100$ a month for car insurance (VW Golf) and 399$ in leasing rates for that VW Golf, then you're at 2.700$ a month in disposable income. But since you still have to pay half a grand a month on your average student loan [5], whoops, 2.200€ a month in disposable income left.
And frankly, making 200-500$ a month more in disposable income? That is not that much of a difference, particularly once you begin factoring in the "soft factors". Here in Germany, you can't be fired at-will, you'll always have to be paid for at least three months, that's one huge uncertainty off my back. You don't have to fear your kid getting shot (12 children a day die in the US from gun violence), you don't have to fear surprise bills when dealing with medical emergencies, you don't have to fear ICE picking you up and deporting you, you don't have to save up for the privilege of your child attending university because that's free in Germany.
If you're lucky and/or well-connected enough to land a job at FAANG/AI? By all means, go for the US. But for everyone else? Come here to Europe. Life's better here. Especially if you or your children are LGBT - or, given the recent anti-abortion crusade that bans lifesaving healthcare in many states, if you carry an uterus.
[1] https://www.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries
[2] https://www.kununu.com/de/gehalt/softwareentwickler-in-15019
[3] https://www.talent.com/tax-calculator?salary=130000&from=yea...
[4] https://sfist.com/2026/05/28/average-rent-for-san-francisco-...
[5] https://admissions.usf.edu/blog/how-much-college-debt-is-too...
[6] https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/resources/gun-violence-fact...
Additionally, you're using the average software engineer salary in the US but then picking California for rent. The article you linked says country wide you'd expect $1950 for renting a 1-bedroom not the $2500 number you are picking for a studio in the bay area.
So you're off by something like $1000 per month (edit: I admit I am simply looking at what I pay for HMO, it's possible that is somehow unrepresentative but I doubt it) by picking the most expensive health plan and mixing up national salaries vs very expensive areas.
The gun violence risk is vastly overblown. The page you are linking to cites a study where gun deaths are being accumulated for ages 1 to 24 years old. Gun deaths are highly non-random and concentrated in older ages and in very specific areas (largely related to gang activity). The average software engineer with family is not going to run into any of that unless they are in the habit of leaving loaded weapons around the house.
Now that may be fair, but anyone looking to move either has or doesn't have student loans and that won't change.
Care to clarify how you came up with that budget? Rent an apartment, pay amenities and buy groceries for 1500 EUR in Munich? Like, the one which is in Bavaria (just in case you have some similarly named city located somewhere in ex-GDR)? I expect some hilarious mental gymnastics TBH...
My US example only included housing as well, simply because I have zero idea how much Americans pay for food, phones and internet.
In any case, a quick search for apartments in Munich (where I lived until last year) shows you quite a bunch of options (way) below that price range [1].
[1] https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/de/bayern/muenchen/wo...