Funding for Science from the 112th Congress

WhoWee

Didn't the President indicate in his State of the Union speech a few days ago that US graduate schools are filled with foreign students - that return to their home countries upon graduation? This indicates that US students are not competitive with foreign students - doesn't it?

nismaratwork

It SEEMS to, but it may be that economic and social factors are the issue, not an issue with USDE funding...

ParticleGrl

I side with economists in the idea that direct spending by the government is a much larger stimulus to the economy than tax cuts. Hence, if you are worried about the deficit, but also worried about the economy, raising taxes is more responsible than cutting spending. Obviously, some mixture of both needs to be done, eventually. Also, the supply-side idea that tax rates are the driving factors of the economy is nonsense.

But we are also coming out of a recession, and have high unemployment. Getting people back to work, and the economy back on its feet will raise the revenue side of things.

US federal spending on scientific research as a percentage of GDP peaked before the 70s. And its not that industry stopped doing R&D, they simply pushed more to short term applied research, which is part of the larger pattern of maximizing short-term profits that characterizes this era of business.

Liberal arts colleges will be fine, however a non-trivial percentage of university operating costs is taken from grants their professors receive. Given that many state universities are already seeing cuts from the state government, a further assault on their operating budget would be extremely painful.

I'd suggest the more likely reason is more simple, low demand. If they needed to increase capacity to meet demand, they would. They do not.

mheslep

If they don't lose their job outright, and an across the board tax hike unambiguously suggests more would.

The revenue from allowing the Bush era tax cuts to expire, that is raise taxes, on incomes from $250,000 all the way up to Bill Gates, was estimated to be $30 billion in 2011, and an average of $70 billion per year over the next ten years. Balance that increase against the $1500 billion deficit.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/...nswer-recovery

It is also worth noting here that federal revenue as a percentage of GDP never exceed 20% even when top bracket tax rates exceeded 90% back in the 60s and 70s. High earners apparently can just stop earning, shelter their earnings, or just leave.

ParticleGrl

I'm not sure this is as well established as you think it is. http://www.presimetrics.com/blog/?p=162

Actually, I think it speaks to the difficulty of making a reasonable living in science. There are other threads about this. Job prospects in many areas of science are fairly weak (overall, we train twice as many scientists as jobs), and while these jobs represent increased opportunity for many foreign students, they represent decreased opportunity for many US citizens.

WhoWee

How responsible is borrowing 40% of the money spent? my bold

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41272983...more_politics/
"The eye-popping numbers mean the government will continue to borrow 40 cents for every dollar it spends.
The new Congressional Budget Office estimates will add fuel to a raging debate over cutting spending and looming legislation that's required to allow the government to borrow more money as the national debt nears the $14.3 trillion cap set by law. Republicans controlling the House say there's no way they'll raise the limit without significant cuts in spending, starting with a government funding bill that will advance next month. "


Also, care to elaborate on the "nonsense" remark?

WhoWee

You think the US graduate programs are full of foreign students because of a lack of domestic science jobs? You don't think the foreign students are better prepared?

nismaratwork

OR...


... there are a lot more people in the entire world MINUS school-age Americans, and those places are prized and so you are now competing with the world, and not just your own fixed house?

Maybe what's changing isn't the USA, it's just the rest of the world. That wouldn't be the first time, but if something isn't done soon it may be the last. Too many big fish out there, and too much around water and energy is at stake to just wonder why everyone else is running to catch up while we get fat?

WhoWee

I'm talking about the competition for seats in the US graduate schools - not jobs.

mheslep

I side with those economists that think the reverse. Given the dismal results of the over one trillion spent on US stimulus, and two trillion more of monetary stimulus, the similar amounts by percentage spent in Japan in prior decades also to no effect, I think siding with the spending crowd is odd.
The idea that government spending is the driving factor in the economy is nonsense. Now where does that get us? No Keynes didn't unambiguously say spending works nor is he the last word on government fiscal stimulus. Friedman wasn't an idiot either.
I agree, I'm sure we all agree. The question is how best to do that.

It's jumped around it bit. The US still funds over a third of the world's total R&D, compared to all of Europe's one quarter. The cuts on the table here are not more than a percent or two of that.


As a percentage of GDP? If it simply kept pace with GDP it would be growing significantly year by year, and I see no good reason why growth in absolute terms would not be sufficient. I imagine a good portion of that R&D back in the cold war era must have been spent on the cold war - neutron bombs, star wars and the like. With those gone it doesn't necessarily mean we've seen reduction, even in percentage terms, of other kinds of beneficial pure R&D.
http://i.bnet.com/blogs/battelle-rd-...g=content;col1

To some of their grant based research maybe (its not clear that industry would not simply pick up the slack), not to education, your original claim, which should be their primary role.

nismaratwork

Me too.

ParticleGrl

Consider the very top programs have a much higher percentage of US graduate students- why? Because the top programs provide the must likely avenues to one of the handful of good science jobs. The percentage of foreign students increases dramatically as you move down the rankings.

If we want to increase the percentage of US citizens in science, we need to increase the number of lucrative jobs in science. Anecdotally, the best phd science students I've known have all left their respective fields in favor of increased opportunity and better salaries outside of science. This is after spending 6+ years of their life earning the phd.

The US saw its largest economic expansion during the post world war 2 period when its tax rates were highest (paying off the war). Admittedly the growth was largely due to the fact that the US was the only major player that didn't see its infrastructure damaged or destroyed by the war. However, these facts solidly refute the idea that tax rates alone dictate economic growth.

Keep in mind, economies grow, so revenue is always increasing, so the question is, after a tax cut, is revenue moving along the same trend? Also, the secondary effects of cutting taxes are complex, including (perhaps) better compliance, faster GDP growth, etc. However, no large tax cuts have ever seen the revenue return completely to the trend in revenue before the cuts were made. The Reagan tax cuts come close, but do not see a return to trend. The Bush cuts permanently diminished revenue. http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/07/1...wered-revenue/

mheslep

If I may: education spending in the United States is funded primarily from property taxes (local) and state governments. Federal spending is relatively speaking an afterthought. If the Education Department left the planet tomorrow total US education spending would be little changed. Combined education spending, not including private education, far exceeds the federal defense budget.



Why do you expect the Federal Ed Dept, around now for three decades, will improve matters, as opposed to making them worse as has been happening?

mheslep

Such as? Your OP listed Sen. Paul's explicit cuts in federal departments and percentages. Which entitlements to US citizens in particular do you suggest be cut and by what percent, to avoid the discretionary cuts originally labeled as "laughable" and "naive"?

Evo

One of the main problems I cited earlier with Paul's desire to dump everyting onto the states and have no Federal obligations is his statement that forest fire control should be solely a state's problem. California is known for it's forest fires and California is on the brink of bankruptcy.

Isn't one of the benefits of being part of the UNITED STATES of AMERICA is that we pool resources and come to the aid of each other? Paul would have us believe that the belief in a United States should be done away with, that we should break up and each state is now on it's own.

Is that what we want, no more United States, we no longer act as a country? We should just break up into states? And then what?

nismaratwork

...Then the people who believe they're superior (of which I think many politicians are a member) think they'll achieve some kind of natural dominance instead of chaos.

Get it? Everyone gets a gun, and absolute freedom... for the aristocratic class that emerges. There have always been people who call themselves conservative, liberal, or libertarian, but really just want to dial the clock back. I think Paul is such a man; he can't think in terms of future solutions, so he looks only to the past for some kind of quasi-mystical guidance.

Besides, he's a horse's ***.

caffenta

This is a completely naive and ridiculous view of the science job market.

I don't know how things are in grad school now, but back then (couple of decades prior), graduate programs were starving for students. The majority of US college degrees were not interested in grad school at all. That's why the foreign/US raio is (or was) so high.

You keep saying this over and over. This may be true in your field, but there are plenty of fields in science, including in physics, where you will work in the same field. I know I do and plenty of people I know also do.

I won't disagree with the statement that jobs in science need to be increased, but that's pretty much the case for everything right now. Unemployment is huge for everybody, not just science.

I am not agreeing with Paul at all, but I do think that the state/federal tax ratio should be higher. It seems to me that a lot of the federal budget is sent back to the states, so why not keep some of the money in the states to begin with? I know a couple of countries in which this the case, and it sort of makes more sense. But it should definitely not be everything.

Exactly. The federal government should ensure that there are common standards amongst all states.