

Bloodbath for Science - swedegeek
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/02/13/bloodbath-for-science/

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jerf
The problem with the logic in this post is that it implies an unbounded amount
of money funneled into research. In the real world, there's a bound on the
amount of money that should be funneled into research. That bound should
probably less than the amount of money it would take to bankrupt the
supporting country. Any argument that doesn't even consider this question
fails to impress me right out of the gate.

There isn't a government expenditure that can't be supported the exact same
way and with virtually the same arguments, but the sum total of all these
wonderful programs is that none of them are going to be funded at all in a few
years when the funding entity is bankrupt and the dollars it can give you are
worthless. Take a 20% cut now (and probably another cut soon) or a 100% cut
not all that many more proposal cycles from now.

At some point the answer has to be _no_.

~~~
dantheman
Agreed, I don't think people realize just how broke the US is. In 9 years, the
interest alone will consume 50% of the US budget. That doesn't leave enough to
cover social security and medicare -- let alone anything else that the federal
government does.

Hopefully people will start demanding cuts in other places too, for instance
the DEA, DOE, DOD, etc. There just isn't enough money. The DOD budget has
increased 100% in the past 10 years. We've seen massive new entitlement
programs passed, these will not be able to be funded.

~~~
wil2k
The problem is that the debt can only grow and grow and grow. Why? Because the
government is not creating the money but borrowing it from the private
banks..(the Federal Reserve is everything BUT 'federal') and the government
needs to pay interest. That way, there's never enough money in existence to
EVER pay of the debt, because the "debt" amount of money only exists.. not
"debt + interest".

So, the interest monster will just get more hungry every year, month, day and
second..

I was down voted for posting the following, but it truly hits the essence of
the problem:

Watch this, it's awesome:

The Secret of Oz <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qIhDdST27g>

Quotes:

"What can government do? The sad answer is -- under the current monetary
system -- nothing. It's not going to get better until the root of the problem
is understood and addressed. There isn't enough stimulus money in the entire
world to get us out of this hole.

"Why? Debt. The national debt is just like our consumer debt -- it's the
interest that's killing us.

"Though most people don't realize it the government can't just issue it's own
money anymore. It used to be that way. The King could just issue stuff called
money. Abraham Lincoln did it to win the Civil War.

"No, today, in our crazy money system, the government has to borrow our money
into existence and then pay interest on it. That's why they call it the
National Debt. All our money is created out of debt. Politicians who focus on
reducing the National Debt as an answer probably don't know what the National
Debt really is. To reduce the National Debt would be to reduce our money --
and there's already too little of that.

"No, you have to go deeper. You have to get at the root of this problem or
we're never going to fix this. The solution isn't new or radical. America used
to do it. Politicians used to fight with big bankers over it. It's all in our
history -- now sadly -- in the distant past.

"But why can't we just do it again? Why can't we just issue our own money,
debt free? That, my friends, is the answer. Talk about reform! That's the only
reform that will make a huge difference to everyone's life -- even worldwide.

"The solution is the secret that's been hidden from us for just over 100 years
-- ever since the time when author L. Frank Baum wrote "The Wonderful Wizard
of Oz."

~~~
derobert
I confess I haven't watched it (sounds painful), since the basic premise is
wrong.

The US Treasury borrows money by issuing Treasuries, yes. It then pays
interest on those, yes. The Federal Reserve creates money, and then injects it
by buying Treasuries (or, recently, MBS's and agency debt, I believe, as
well).

The vast majority of Treasury notes, agency debt, MBS's, etc. are NOT held by
the Federal Reserve. So the amount outstanding does not pose any significant
constraint on the Federal Reserve's injection of money.

Even if /all/ outstanding Treasury debt were eliminated, that'd just mean the
Fed would have to purchase other bonds.

Also, when the Federal Reserve buys Treasuries, it receives the interest
payments. What does it do with that money? Well, it turns it over to the
Treasury. (If you look at the Fed's annual reports, this is actually many
billions) So the T-notes held by the Fed to inject the money essentially don't
have interest paid on them, because the Treasury is paying the interest to
itself, indirectly.

------
peregrine
Can't we find $1.5 billion floating around in the military budget to cut
instead of the funds that fuels science and innovation? Sure companies do a
fine job of innovating but they don't do things like Fermilab, which have long
term potential to change our world. Long term being far longer then stock
holders in public companies would allow for.

~~~
j_baker
"You're letting the terrorists win! You scientists need to just go back to
your ivory towers while the rest of us _real_ Americans stand up for freedom!"

~~~
loewenskind
Nothing lets the terrorists win more than spending ourselves into a stupor
chasing non-existent boogy men.

------
juiceandjuice
Dear NSF and DOE,

Thanks for the internet, google, fusion and fission research, alternative
energy research, quarks, thousands of PhD students, supercomputers, etc...

Given your general success with things, we no longer think it's viable to fund
you. You see, we intend to buy 2,443 F-35 fighter planes over the next decade
or so. It's unfortunate, but given that each one of those planes cost close to
$130 million a pop (not including maintenance), we can't really justify
science anymore.

Yours truly,

The American Public (specifically the red ones)

------
Tichy
While I don't trust the government to pick the right things to slash, I am
pretty sure there is a lot of bullshit research going on that could easily be
slashed. It's probably not effective to not put any constraints on science
research at all - there has to be some correcting factor like competition.

~~~
dnautics
Unfortunately, that's not the case, Study after study shows that individuals
in creative endeavours perform more poorly when they are incentivized by
performance results (versus mechanical or rote tasks). However, that's not to
say that we aren't overinvested in science. We are. I say that as a 2nd year
"postdoc" in the biological sciences. The scare quotes are there because I got
my job off of craigslist and because we spent the last 10 years creating too
many junk PhDs who are just jamming up the hiring pipeline and keeping PhDs
who care about intellectual pursuits away. And, yes, my job is really put in
danger by this, but I don't care. I'm seeking 100% private, charitable funding
for my next scientific endeavor.

~~~
Tichy
I don't really know what system could work. The current "max out publications"
approach apparently doesn't work, as it only leads to mass production with low
substance. I guess it is unfortunate that the people with the money
(politicians) are not in a position to really judge the science they are
supposed to fund. So superficial judging criteria are bound to happen.

------
teyc
Actually, scientists aren't paid well.

There are a lot of talented PhDs who were willing to work for very little
money ($30k), and these people will reluctantly leave.

The US is getting a more than its money worth. Cutting back will hurt the US
more in the long run.

Many of them will be from overseas, who are doing important work that is
impossible to get done in their own country, and this work is important not
only to science itself but to humanity.

~~~
dnautics
There are a lot of <strike>talented</strike> PhDs who were willing to work for
very little money ($30k), and these people will reluctantly leave.

There, fixed that for you.

------
kingkawn
This is what we get as a nation for encouraging a political culture that
doesn't value the work of government.

------
richcollins
_And how does cutting $100 billion in government spending “help our economy
grow and create jobs”? The immediate result will be the loss of something like
a million jobs._

Those people will finally get to move on helping "make things that people
want" instead of squandering stolen money.

------
kiba
Maybe this will encourage scientists to interact with the public more and ask
for funding from them instead.

I don't even know why they're so important other than a vague "moar knowledge
mean moar technology!"

~~~
muhfuhkuh
Governments fund cures and vaccines for disease. Private companies don't work
on cures, which is why the last things we've cured is polio, which was
developed by an NIH-funded university researcher; and widespread famine
through much of the developing world, by crop breeding and fertilizer research
led by Norman Borlaug and the US and Mexican government.

~~~
waterlesscloud
If the last thing we cured was polio, how does that justify the money the
government spent of research in the decades since?

~~~
sliverstorm
The past few decades have been dedicated to things that haven't been solved
yet.

