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Can Long Term Research Survive the Coming Age of Austerity?
Hugh Pickens writes "Alexis Madrigal writes that everyone agrees you need science and technology R&D, but when budgets get tight, research into quantum dots or the fundamental forces that cause earthquakes has a hard time holding the line against health care or tax cuts for the richest Americans. Different countries are taking different approaches. Japan is focusing on its most elite researchers, giving up to $50 million to 30 different people. Other countries are just giving up on some areas of research to focus on others; for example, US particle physicists who will spend their careers trying to drive from the backseat as our European counterparts run the Large Hadron Collider. A third approach might be to reduce redundancies in research. 'An idea to provide funding in a larger number of key areas that would avoid duplication is to create dedicated research centers where several investigators can work in parallel on complementary topics,' writes Joerg Heber. "If we do less research we need to do it right. And using this crisis to think about our research infrastructure needn't be a bad thing. It should be seen as an opportunity to reform the academic research system in a more comprehensive and fundamental way than the academic community and the politicians normally dare to think about.'"
I need to grab some popcorn.
The U.S.'s R&D lies privatized mostly in universities funded by the university or a company.
all of that big research drove the economy to the giant bubble of an intangible /meta/digital-numeric entity that it is today. it is all one in the same. seamless. cyclic. natural.
Oh it's so true, that damned medical establishment.
When I got spinal problems from working so much on my back and knees, the doctors insisted I needed surgery.
But then I went to my alt-med friend, Stoner Bob, and he referred me to a chiropractor.
The very first session, when the chiropractor learned how hard I worked making money, he laid out a treatment plan that was right for me. Now I go five times a week! My bad is a little better, and my wallet is lighter than ever!
Can Progress Survive Austerity as a Foregone Conclusion?
As a researcher, I think giving to the most elite is a moderately good idea. Reading most of the research that's generated by people like me, you realize it's just PhDs trying their darnedest to ++publicationCount, which is a pretty stupid thing for taxpayer dollars to fund. The major work, more often than not, comes out of well-renown labs, and the students who come out of those labs.
On the other hand, lots of the fundamental knowledge necessary for the "major work" mentioned earlier comes from the incremental work that isn't sexy in its own right, but very necessary nonetheless. No simple answer here.
While simplistic, you're right. I'll be simplistic too- I hate Republicans.
The US really should accept that it doesn't need one of everything and there is no shame using the resources of other countries rather than duplicating them.
I do security
For some stuff, the science is "easy", but it's the needed engineering that costs an arm and a leg (Space Shuttle, LHC, etc, etc)
Which means you can't go "brute force" anymore on problems.
Think, rethink experiments, use creativity. It will be better.
I am sure there are new things to be discovered "on the cheap"
Not that I'm agains LHC, on the contrary. But what if someone finds a way to have 10Tev collisions using a different and easier method.
how long until
Alt-Med has been growing like gangbusters, its popularity at an all time high: it must work.
You mean people are idiots. Most alt-med is garbage that has either been demonstrated to be ineffective or equivalent to a placebo (e.g. acupuncture), actually harmful (e.g. taking HIV-positive people off ARVs to "cure" AIDS), or not even worth investigating (e.g. homeopathy). The rest of it isn't alt-med, it falls under the purview of regular straight-up medicine (e.g. nutrition). Medicine should be evidence-based. Alt-med isn't medicine because it isn't based on evidence. That said, the pharmaceutical comapnies need to be regulated better and the FDA, NIH, etc. need to end their immense conflicts of interest.
Diminishing marginal returns are very relevant for where government funding should go. Thus in general, small scientific programs are much more likely to have a very high output proportional to their cost than large programs. Since all science funding is tiny, cutting into it makes very little sense in that context. Of course, this is aside from the other serious issues with the recent pushes for austerity such as how in the US this apparently means cuts to absolutely everything except for military spending.
they benefit disproportionately from war and disease, too. we should cut back on the wars and get them out of the profit cycle of insurance, big healthcare chains and big pharmy.
Really, people.
Perceived need is infinite. Resources are finite. Further, as we push back the boundaries of knowledge, the experiments get more and more expensive.
We can argue all day about priorities, but let's actually talk about those priorities - simple, pointless whinging (such as 'US particle physicists have to drive from the back seat' because the Euros have the LHC....) is little more than tantrum-throwing.
In a democracy, there is ALWAYS going to be a pressure from the mass to address their needs with Bread and Circuses. It's not the best long-term solution for anything (well, unless your goal is to breed a larger underclass), but the fact is that you have to sell your idea, or implement a tyranny in which your priorities 'win'.
-Styopa
Bad example. There are a whole lot of back and joint problems that don't require surgery to be fixed but can be fixed / helped by physical therapies, massage, stretches, exercise, etc. I'm sure there are some chiropractors who are quacks but for the most part it seems like evidence-based medicine to me.
Multiple people working on the same thing leads to different ideas and more innovation, having only one group of people working on something adds only one perspective.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
How about the welfare losers paying theirs? You do know close to half Americans DO NOT WORK, nor PAY TAXES? You fools, go to Russia and have your utopian commie dreams and hate the rich there!
>Alt-Med has been growing like gangbusters, its popularity at an all time high: it must work.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
It's only popular because people like you have been able to dress your snake oil up in white coats and "professional" language. It's marketing.
>Mark my words.
I've marked your words, and underneath I've written "raving loony."
You should be sued into the ground. Indeed, if a single person has died because you discouraged him or her from seeking actual effective treatment in time, you should be charged with manslaughter, at a minimum.
--
BMO
Less duplication? In scientific research? So instead of the replication and confirmation/expansion of results, which used to be at the foundation of the scientific method, every "experiment" or study will now be done once and its outcome accepted unquestioningly as the final word?
Clearly, all we have to do is eliminate all funding for genetics (evolution), geology, and climate research, and they'll be plenty of money left over to test all of our new weapons at least twice before putting them into the field.
has a hard time holding the line against health care or tax cuts for the richest Americans.
Flamebait like this in the article summary just will veer the discussion completely off-topic.
It's also why I now have AdBlock Plus turned on when I (less frequently) browse this site.
Tone down the obvious political bias! Thanks!
The problem with cutting overlapping research is that the act of doing so, strengthens and re-enforces the research done. Mistakes happen, having researchers work along the same general lines helps them check their work and avoid messy mistakes if they reach wrong conclusion.
I'd rather the research in medicine was done in ways to bolster the strength of the conclusions for medicines and techniques that might be used on me and my loved ones.
It's a shame that money has become so important that its possession and expressions of its possession will be the last to be cut, while productive uses of it are the first to be cut. It's a sick, twisted society that will hang a hammer in a museum and piss on people that want to build a house with it.
Just imagine how much cash we'd have for research if we would have forced the banks to do the same thing that GM was forced to do.
Declare bankruptcy, wipe out shareholders, and trim bond holders. Those are the people that invested in risky behavior and they should have paid the price.
The swedes did it and they recovered from their banking crisis.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/06/go-swedish-part-47/
the rich benefit disproportionately from government services, they should pay their fair share for them.
So to you, "fair" is that out of 10 people, 1 person pays almost the entire bill, 4 people pay a little bit, and the remaining 5 pay nothing at all? On top of that, those non-paying 5 people are the ones consuming most of the benefits! This all seems "fair" to you?
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
I'll make no further comment on your alt-medicine nonsense, others have already ripped you a new one. I'll simply refer you to this site.
Actually I'd argue the middle class and poor have benefited far more from government services, which is frankly a disservice to the middle class and poor. The rich pay most of the taxes anyway, so why does this confuse anyone why they wouldn't try paying less or demanding more say over how taxes are spent.
We could fund amazing research to benefit all if we would shitcan social security, medicare, ObamaCare, and the War Department. The rest is peanuts.
Yeah, those loser children, disabled and elderly. Shake those spongers down for more cash. Nevermind that they don't have any cash to start with.
Why not give a small amount, even 10% of that research money go towards helping alternative medicine practitioners prove that their work is actually effective? We know it it from the millions of satisfied patients, now we just need some money and lab space to prove it.
There is plenty of money in the Alternative Medicine industry. Have you been seen what they charge for useless homeopathic medicines? Tell you what, why don't you put some of your money into just a few peer-reviewed scientifically sound research projects that don't rely on anecdotal evidence to prove their conclusions. Once you get something that proves your basic approach to medicine is sound, then we'll start throwing money at you. Until that, why should you get any more money than astrologists, psychics, or perpetual motion "inventors"?
The non-paying 5 are not consuming most benefits. They have no factories to be protected by the police, they own no deposits to be insured by the government, they own no home to be protected from fire. They do not use the roads to make money, nor do they benefit from the legal system to uphold their patents or copyrights.
Take $10,000,000 + "we think X causes cancer" and you will get, surprise surprise, "proof" that X causes cancer.
And "alt-med" is different? If you take $10,000,000 + "we think X cures cancer" and you will get, surprise surprise, "proof" that X cures cancer. Then all of the sudden we're all strapping magnets to our heads and yelling into our cell phones at a minimum 18" distance to avoid tumors because of the latest "study". The reason "Big Pharma" is so successful (aside from very favorable patent law) is that their research shows tangible, measurable results. "Alt-med," even after thousands of years of research and practice, simply makes the true-believers feel good while doing little to actually treat the ailments or showing any benefit for skeptics who undergo the same treatment.
On the other hand, things like "I wonder how X works" gets funded because it fills in gaps that we simply don't even begin to understand and similar "fill in the gap" research is largely responsible for the tech that we have now but lacked only a couple of hundred years ago.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
has a hard time holding the line against health care or tax cuts for the richest Americans.
- and my comments are routinely moderated as 'troll', while obviously trolling is done on regular basis in the 'story' summaries?
You can't handle the truth.
I for one, think that we'll never have enough money spent on pot smoking mensturating monkeys. Or shrimp on treadmills. Or examining toenail clippings for nicotine.
$72 Billion in improper payments in 2008
$25 Billion to maintain vacant federal property
$60 Billion in healthcare fraud anually.
$13 Billion Wasted or Stolen in Iraq, with another $7.5 Billion unaccounted for.
$2.4 Billion in Jets for the Pentagon that they did not want.
$2 Billion in Hurricane Katrina fraud.
$2 Billion per year in payments to farmers NOT to farm their land.
$3 Billion to resand beaches (which washes back into the sea).
$146 Million more spent on first class over coach flights for Federal Employees
$140 Million for Senator Kennedy's Institute
$2.6 Million to train chineese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job
$3.9 Million to rearrange desks at the Securities and Exchange commission
$1.2 Million to ship 2 packages overnight from the Pentagon (aircraft parts costing less than $1 each).
Seems there is plenty of money-- just isn't being spent very efficiently.
And the lower 25% pay hardly any overall taxes and the lower 50% pay 0 or negative federal income taxes.
The lower 15% are paid not to work, and the middle make enough in wages or handouts to survive having to pay for the generational debt passed to them.
The system is broken on both ends and is pressing on the middle. It needs to be fixed. I don't think you realize how much money is being taken in a year.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/feed-your-family-on-10-billion-a-day.html kind of puts it into perspective.
Ah yes lets make the top 5% of people who pay something like 60% of the taxes - http://ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html - pay even more even as the bottom 50% pay less then 3%. And who needs all those services again?
And the last numbers I saw suggested that even if we increase the top tax bracket rate up to 70% it would only bring in something like 300billion, which is a drop in the bucket. Wouldn't it make more sense to look at where the highest costs are? oh wait that is social security, medicare and military.
Idiot.
The rest of the World has been doing good research without the colossal budgets their American colleagues enjoy (I know, I was part of a project that operated on a shoestring - but we still found the free brown dwarfs in the galaxy). Maybe there will be fewer spectacular programmes, but of course great research will still get done. Of course, you can always join international collaborations as partners to pool resources, rather than be the rich kid having all the toys to themselves.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but Americans have had it so good for so long they didn't even realise how fortunate they are. Even with less excess wealth about they are still by far the richest people per capita - although certainly indvidivual Americans have it very tough at the moment - so it sounds a bit whiney when we hear that some program is being reduced because the US is going from (comparatively) very wealthy to just wealthy. Be grateful for what you already have, and appreciate all the things you also have that don't require lots of money (your health, friends, family, girlfriend, more opportunities than most Africans can dream of, more cheeseburgers than even Garfield can dream of, Mom's basement, and that fact you even have a computer to read Slashdot on!)
The rich pay most of the taxes anyway
This is a myth. In most western nations, the _middle classes_ fund the majority of government services. The poor don't pay much if any tax, and the rich can generally shelter themselves from much of the taxation. It's Ma and Pa Kettle who shoulder the burden.
This is one of the contributing reasons third world countries have trouble funding their programs - No middle classes. They just have very rich and very poor. It's also one of the real dangers posed by the erosion of the middle class in the USA. As the US moved to a rich/poor model, with fewer and fewer in the middle, the treasury will start to suffer.
They have 80% of the wealth.
The wealthy are the ones that use the services. The poor own no oil companies that need protecting.
If you're a U.S. particle physicist and you want not to drive from the back seat....then become a European particle physicist. Nothing says you have to do your research in the U.S. Suck it up.
Most of this type of funding is a rounding error in the budget. The NSF gets $7B I believe. It's really not worth talking about cutting except for ideological reasons...
While most basic R&D is done within Universities, it is mostly funded by grants – mostly Federal in nature (NIH, NSF, etc.) Sometimes a interested party will throw money at basic research [non-profits researching a specific illness, Industry groups, etc.]. So if Federal research dollars dry up I suspect we will see a lot of unemployed post-docs and graduate students.
"Dr. Bob," a strong argument as to why subscriptions should only get early access to articles if they have positive karma...
I'm replying to this so your reply sticks out.
The problem is a Rift between companies who can fund their research and the Scientific community.
A lot of companies would like to put money into R&D however the Scientific community tends to shun Private Enterprise as the evil daemon. Especially when they ask what could this research be used for they go into so prerecorded rant about how Science isn't about making money it is just about learning more about the universe...
For a lot of this stuff they can say. "Smaller Faster Computer Chips", "Possible new energy source", "Next Generation of Weapon" and they will get their funding. They may have to do some less theoretical research as part of the job, but that is no difference then a professor having to teach some undergrad snots an intro courses just so you can continue your real research.
But over the years There has been a growing Rift between Academics/Scientist and Private Enterprise, and it is mostly just due to some crazy political mumbojumbo on both sides more then any real problems.
My guess this Rift started back in the 1960's where colleges became refugee locations for kids who didn't want to go to war, and many of them with their strict political beliefs stayed there, and created the rift from universities and the outside world.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm a hard-working hedge fund manager. Want to buy this nice, big toxic asset? We have a $6 million stake in it too! (Note that I don't tell you we also have a $2 billion bet against it...)
I am not posting this to necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but growing popularity definitely does not correlate to effectiveness. After all, there are a lot of stupid people out there that will fall for anything, such as the less-reputable side of any business.
A few years back, my brother was hit by a reckless driver, and my brother's car was thrown into a tree. Long-story-short, he had nasty back problems for a long time. However, he went and saw a chiropractor, which absolutely helped him (combined with healthy eating and rigorous exercise regiments). I doubt he's 100%, but he's probably in the 90+%.
Still, just as there is one positive example, I am sure that there are numerous counter examples. Of course, that's not to say that there aren't an equal number of problems with traditional medicine (especially among general practitioners that get forced to do everything, as I found out last year).
I'm replying to this so your PINGAS sticks out.
Because that money has ALREADY been spent on so called "Alt-Med" and the results disproved it.
In-fact your wording is that the money will go to "prove" it meaning that the money wouldn't go to science at all. Scientific research isn't spent to prove anything. It is spent to test hypothesis.
Spending money to prove quackery (aka alt-med) is spending money for advertising and propaganda not science.
1. Life isn't "fair," (though it's closer to fair for the rich)
2. That's a simplistic way of putting it
3. That's the way it has to work
Yes the rich should pay more back to society, having gotten more. I see no evidence that the American dream is reality: hard work and self-sustenance are illusions that conservatives pretend are real. The rich owe more back to the public than the poor, since they earned their wealth either by being born into wealth, getting a lot of help from the public, or most often, both.
Science can and will survive. And in the long run *some* harsh times are actually good for science. It will force necessary changes that would otherwise never happen because of vested interests, etc.
It turns out that "the rich" pay the majority of the taxes. Thus any meaningful tax cut, for any purpose, will cut taxes for "the rich" more than it will cut taxes for "the poor".
There have been several times in the history of the USA where the overall tax rate was lowered, and tax revenues went up. This is because "the rich" moved money out of tax shelters and started investing it, which grew GNP. In other words, tax revenue went up because government was collecting a lower rate on a much larger amount of money. And "the rich" paid more taxes than they paid before.
There are some people who view the above as a problem; this problem is called "the rich get richer". Even if the poor get richer also, which confuses me. How will you increase jobs without someone who is rich getting richer? And how does that rich person hurt the poor by getting richer?
Historically, the US government has not managed to collect more than 19 or 20 percent of GNP in tax revenue. Even when the highest tax bracket was 70% or even higher, revenues as a percent of GNP were not higher than when the highest tax bracket was under 40%. If you think you can fix the USA's financial problems by taxing the rich, you need to explain one of these: (a) why this time it will be different, and the government will collect over 20% of GNP; (b) why GNP will grow faster with higher tax rates; or (c) why the high tax rates will limit the growth of GNP and collect less tax revenue, but it's worth it because it is important to keep the rich from getting richer.
My own view is that if 19% is what the US government can realistically collect, we should be trying to grow the GNP of the US so that the government is collecting 19% of a larger GNP. That means reducing taxes, regulatory burden, and uncertainty.
But don't take my word for this; see some references:
Thomas Sowell: Dissecting The Demagoguery About 'Tax Cuts For The Rich'
Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy: The 19 Percent Solution
Disclaimer: I'm either middle class or posibly upper-middle-class, but I am not remotely "the rich" and tax cuts for "the rich" would not directly benefit me.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The guys that control the purse strings are politicians. And politicians are owned by big pharma. Just go look at how much money the big drug companies hand out in political donations every campaign cycle. It's up to over $30 million now. And that's just DIRECT giving to FEDERAL candidates. That doesn't include all their proxy non-profits (with their "public interest" ad money) and state giving.
So yeah, good luck with that.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
We have been suffering the age of austerity for over 30 years. What's coming is the "new" age of barbarity.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Perhaps the rich should just get less services....
The problem is these services are so complex only the Rich have resources to use them.
I remember in my state there was a new service for Small Businesses to give some discounts for training. At the time I worked for a small company (5 employees) we spent a day filling out the paper work only to get it rejected because the training had to be in state. So we then had to fine training available in State then it was rejected because our reasons for such training wasn't fully valid... We never got to do the training. But our competitors who were bigger then us did because they can afford to have people do all the paperwork and spend hours on the phone knowing all the details.
Remember this when you think those Republicans are just out to protect the rich when they get rid of all these services, when those Democrats make those services so complex that only the rich can access them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The assumption that we have to take "the coming age of austerity" for granted is backwards. Health care and research aren't mutually exclusive. We need both, and the world has enough resources to provide both!
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
You know... most businesses hire private security. Just sayin'.
Yes, that is fair to me, considering that the gentleman who is paying the most is the one most able to pay, the four who are paying a little are paying what they are able, and the ones not paying at all are quite unable to do so. Paying what you can for the benefit of others is the cost of society.
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
If not money, then how would you allocate resources to “productive” uses? Have you read any recent communist economic publications? They basic admit that Hayek was right when it came to price signals. If the hard left is giving up on a command and control economy you know that money is important.
If only one person does an experiment, that is only half of the science. You have to have an independent team (or preferably several) who can repeat the experiment to verify the results.
Most of the Rich Work quite hard and make a lot of sacrifices during their life to get rich. You make it sound like it is an easy thing to obtain. Being born in a rich family helps a little bit but it isn't a guarantee. There are a lot of stories of the Self made man, who just got sick of being poor and then rose to become rich.
They didn't want to live like they are poor and wanted more services in life so they worked to become rich.
I have worked with Rich People and they work very hard. I have worked with poor people who say they are working very hard, and they are not, they may be tiring themselfs out but they are not working hard.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What?
The police exist to protect people as well. I guess without factories, then there would be no rape, assault, theft or murder.
Then they do not have a single bank account (see FDIC), which is highly unlikely.
Many people that do not pay taxes live in free, or highly subsidized government housing (e.g., paid for by taxes). This building/house will also be insured. Government housing is also not always the slums that it is trumped up to be, particularly when referring to subsidized housing.
I guess they're not looking for work. Not going to work. Not going to the grocery store. Not having food/groceries delivered. Not going to school.
That's all the legal system is for? I suppose they can't sue corporations. No one has ever sued, say McDonald's, for spilling coffee on themselves.
Every single point that you made is downright stupid. Go enjoy justifying stealing from people. I suppose it will be easy, as the police aren't there to stop it from happening in your world.
This is true. In fact, there's actually a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is doing it. Total number of beneficial effective medical techniques they have developed via the use of chiropractic, homeopathy, chi, acupuncture, or any other so-called alternative medicine: 0. Their yearly budget: something in the range of $120 million. Your (if you're an American) tax dollars at work.
The idea that govt can only spend what it takes in has been disproved by this country since day one of its founding. Reagan proved it, deficits don't matter.
"tax cuts for the richest Americans" :P
Nice to see an unbiased statement with no political ax to grind. I'm gonna rush right over and read this "article."
All that cash goes to Big Pharma in the form of grants and tax breaks.
Pics or it didn't happen.
Your first premise is wrong. There is no U.S.A.
Move to another country.
Yours In Osh,
K. Trout
I have to agree. For some reason success is demonized in our society. If you're not poor like the rest of us then you must be one of the evil "rich" who spends their entire day trying to figure out how to steal money from poor people... Unless you're on TV, then you're okay. Celebrity wealth doesn't count.
Currently nutrition is alt. medicine. Doctors don't understand it and as long as big pharma controls the industry they never will and no one else will be allowed to use it to help people.
Of course there are snake oil sales men out there, but that does not mean that some people that are outside of the accepted practises of doctors are not treating and curing people.
And even snake oil is better then half of the current system, there are drugs out there that are being subscribed daily that have less then or equal the effect of a placebo and lots of side effects.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Here at my university, after the budget cuts were announced the first thing we cut was the agricultural science department. I guess because it's not very glamorous anymore, and some of it is long term (and apparently no one needs to eat anymore, glad we got that one taken care of.). One of my interests is pomology (the study of fruit producing plants), and almost all of that got cut just about everywhere due to it's long term nature, so I wouldn't say it is out of the question that something similar could happen to other fields.
Those Chiropractors that aren't quacks are called physical therapists and would kick your ass for calling them Chiropractors.
Those Chiropractors that are quacks are...well...Chiropractors.
Short answer: No. Nope, it can't. We need to get the budget balanced and the debt down to a reasonable amount. There will be many brutal discussions about what gets funded and what doesn't. Long term research just doesn't have the lobbying clout of Defense or Big Oil. They're going to get hammered. Note that I'm not endorsing cuts to long term research, just predicting that in the shady politics where an actual default is contemplated as a craven political move, we have no hope of actually doing anything useful with what little money there is left to spend.
There may be subtle effects of nutrition that medicine doesn't have a handle on, but things are pretty well worked out, else we would be battling deficiency diseases just a little bit more than we are (and even among the undernourished people suffering from deficiencies, the what is generally understood) .
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The lie comes from focusing on only one tax from one level of government.
This link http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/02/tax-rates-for-rich-and-poor.html shows the effective federal tax rate:
From a recent CBO report http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/98xx/doc9884/12-23-EffectiveTaxRates_Letter.pdf, here are effective tax rates (total taxes divided by total income) for 2005, the most recent year available:
Lowest quintile: 4.3 percent
Second quintile: 9.9 percent
Middle quintile: 14.2 percent
Fourth quintile: 17.4 percent
Percentiles 81-90: 20.3 percent
Percentiles 91-95: 22.4 percent
Percentiles 96-99: 25.7 percent
Percentiles 99.0-99.5: 29.7 percent
Percentiles 99.5-99.9: 31.2 percent
Percentiles 99.9-99.99: 32.1 percent
Top 0.01 Percentile: 31.5 percent
For state and local taxes,http://www.itepnet.org/whopays3.pdf shows that lower income pays a higher tax rate (11%) than higher income (7%).
Well luckily there seems to be a lot of places you could take research money from without stinting technological or knowledge advancement.
I used to work in the Psychology department of a university and I dare you to come up with a reason why it benefits anyone to do another study on how harmful smoking is or the dynamics of a relationship.
Still they get millions in grants.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I've seen it posted here before, but no-one's responded to this post with it, so I'll express the sentiment;
In the olden days, modern medicine as we know it didn't really exist, so any treatments were what we'd call 'alternative medicine' today. Over the years we discovered that some of it worked well, and some of it didn't, and by applying the techniques that had been found to work, modern medicine evolved. All that stuff that didn't work: well that's still alternative medicine.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
How about we stop giving more money to those who don't need it and share the wealth more evenly? Oh noes, that's socialism. Give me a fucking break.
I am pissed, because of a very recent study, that has shown once again that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Between 2000 and 2010 net income has dropped by 2.5% in Germany. Lower income groups have had a decrease between 16% and 22% in their paycheck. High income groups have seen a modest increase of 1%. Partly, because the low-wage sector was expanded massively by our politicians in that time.
Source: http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/wirtschaft/einkommen-gehaelter-sinken-im-aufschwung/351611.php (The study was done by the Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, an institution that isn't known for its pro-labour bias.)
Meanwhile, the economy is booming. But only the ultra-rich are profiting from it. And our very own party of corporate whores^W advocates, the FDP, says that the "Leistungsträger" (translation: those who know how to successfully game the system) need to be relieved.
Now, go mod me Troll or Off-Topic.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
If it is meanigful research the private market will pick it up!
Just because some "alt-med" doesn't work for everything doesn't mean it is a con. Acunpuncure is very effective to treat problems you would usually emply muscle relaxants, and also for stress related ailments. Will it cure your ulcer ? No.
Homeopathy also has some areas were it is effective, mostly allegies. Will it work for the flu ? Of course not.
The problem is that people treat this like religion. They either claim that something works, or that it is a con.
Actually, there are several cases (ulcer, for example) where associating tradicional medicine and alt (acunpuncture, on this example) will give better results.
the rich benefit disproportionately from government services, they should pay their fair share for them.
So to you, "fair" is that out of 10 people, 1 person pays almost the entire bill, 4 people pay a little bit, and the remaining 5 pay nothing at all? On top of that, those non-paying 5 people are the ones consuming most of the benefits! This all seems "fair" to you?
Yes, it's completely reasonable, for 2 main reasons:
1. Trying to get anything out of the non-paying 5 is about as effective as trying to squeeze blood from a stone. They don't have the money, that's why they aren't paying. Trying to get anything more from the chipping-in-but-still-not-huge contributors also is hard to do right now.
2. The guy who's paying almost the entire bill has the ability to make the rules about who gets what.
The other issue is that once you take away the silly analogy of a country with 10 people in it and get back in reality, you discover that your numbers are misleading at best: The groups you've described only apply to income taxes, and ignore all other kinds of taxes (most notably payroll taxes). And the 1 guy with a lot of cash is paying about 70% of the total bill, not "almost the entire" amount.
The alternate analogy here: Imagine 10 people living in a house with a roof that needs $20K worth of repairs. 1 person makes $100K, 4 people make $50K, 2 people make $15K, and 2 people make nothing. How would you going to come up with the money to pay for it? Would you kick out the people making nothing, knowing that they have nowhere to go and will likely die of exposure or starvation once winter comes? Would you try to ignore the need for repairs until the roof collapses?
I am officially gone from
It might be the coming of the age of austerity for the west but that certainly isn't true for the east, at least not for China. Pick a discipline, any discipline and you will find evidence of China waxing where the western world (mostly read the US) is waning. If people think the west (also read mostly the US) can continue to dump countless billions of dollars into the money pit known as the middle east through our wars, through our relentless thirst for petroleum, while stripping every last drop of resources from education, basic research, technology research, social services, infrastructure, etc. and still survive as anything other than a crumbled husk of a world power they are terribly mistaken.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Well if you are as confident as you sound then I guess there is no reason say anything other then "I disagree"
But just just because I am a fan of logic I would like to point your circular argument.
You "prove" that modern medicine has a handle on nutrition because modern medicine knows of no nutritional based diseases that are prevalent and can treat all that it finds.
But you fail to take into account that if modern medicine knows nothing/little about nutrition then it might not diagnosis a disease as nutritional based in the first place.
Basically you have already taken as a fact what you are trying to prove, so of course you end up proving it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
and it is worthless unless they have real protection from government services.
Why would homeopathy work for anything? The mechanism is completely bogus. If anyone gets better after a homeopathic treatment, it's entirely placebo or luck (which is actually true of a lot of things -- we tend to naturally get over viruses like the cold and allergies wax and wane, etc.).
Or your brother was absolutely helped by healthy eating & rigorous exercise regiments, and the chiro had sweet fuck all to do with it.
the cost of the bush tax cuts is $1.3 trillion so far, but nice try at phony numbers.
The police exist to protect people as well. I guess without factories, then there would be no rape, assault, theft or murder.
I never made such a claim, nice straw man.
Then they do not have a single bank account (see FDIC), which is highly unlikely.
A lot of them do not. Why do you think those check cashing places exist?
I guess they're not looking for work. Not going to work. Not going to the grocery store. Not having food/groceries delivered. Not going to school.
Other than going to work none of those are the use of roads to make money. Any such use of roads for work is not going to be damaging them the way the a truck will. Road damange does not scale at a fixed rate. Any food or goods they buy are something some else makes money on.
That's all the legal system is for? I suppose they can't sue corporations. No one has ever sued, say McDonald's, for spilling coffee on themselves.
You could, but that is again not its most common use.
Every single claim you make is a strawman or just dumb. Enjoy your lack of a functional state while the super rich pay very little. Taxes are not theft.
I'm saying that modern science has diagnosed (and treated!) diseases arising from nutrients that we require a few dozen micrograms of.
I understand your point about that not proving anything about nutrition, but it is a lot more compelling than waving your hands in the air.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
We need a way to sort out science from shit.
I like the False Prophet method.
Prove scientifically that an assertion is valid, or be stoned to death in public. :)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The state of medical research today is, basically, full of confirmation bias. Take $10,000,000 + "we think X causes cancer" and you will get, surprise surprise, "proof" that X causes cancer. Why not give a small amount, even 10% of that research money go towards helping alternative medicine practitioners prove that their work is actually effective? We know it it from the millions of satisfied patients, now we just need some money and lab space to prove it. Alt-Med has been growing like gangbusters, its popularity at an all time high: it must work.
I love how this goes from 'medical research clearly has confirmation bias' to 'my idea obviously works I just need money to prove it'
What bullshit.
Success isn't demonized...its The Goal in America. Its the goddamn American fucking dream.
The problem is...the American dream is a fucking lie. It is complete fabricated bullshit to keep the minions subserviant to the rich. And no, that doesn't make every rich person an asshole, or a pile of crap...but lets face it here people...the entire drive of existance for a majority of Americans is to "be successful" and "get wealthy"while we work our pathetic 9-5 jobs that pay a thousandth of what we bring in for our corporate overlords. But they don't spread the wealth...they fucking hoard it in big fucking swimming pools of money. That's why tax cuts to the rich do fuck all for the people...because the savings don't get handed out to the working class (new jobs)...they're kept by the top 1%.
I work my fucking ass off...I make damn good money/year...and I'm as subserviant to the corporate overlords today as I was 15 years ago. I scrimp and save & never get ahead, while the bigwigs bought a new 5+ million dollar house this year. Why? Because I fucking work my balls off making them more money while I suffer because I don't have a brilliant product or idea that I can sell...I'm stuck in the corporate grind, and probably will be for the rest of my life.
Unless you're one of those lucky few that come up with and/or steal some great idea and fucking get rich off of it, or manage to impress some asshole who casts you in movies, or you have enough genetic talent to be good at a sport, you're entirely fucked.
The dream is a fucking lie. Sorry to spray your day with shit.
Actually, something rather like homeopathy's ridiculous dilution does work for some food allergies. You start by taking a tiny bit of whatever it is you're allergic to. Then you take a tiny bit more. It's called oral immunotherapy.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Funding the most elite is a dangerous idea. How would you determine who, the elite is? Most of the time being elite, means having the clout and running factory-like labs. Money should be distributed across and you will never know where the gem is! The US still has money for research, let's be optimistic. The best discoveries come in toughest of times!
Slashdot is in love with archaic "wooden ship" methods of "exploration" in preference to developing remote-manned and robotic systems which are mandatory anyway for human travel in and exploitation of outer space.
The environment is permanently hostile. Humans will merely operate machines, so make better machines first. We need those on Terra too.
"Meat first" was fine when wooden ships and human crews were throwaways, but that has not been the case for some time. Now, the BURDEN of supporting humans with the primitive OVERALL level of technology we have is absurdly expensive.
The idea that supporting engineering, materials, and computing tech in the rest of society can catch up while we focus on remote-manned systems is anathema to the Cold War model of penis-waving astronaut launch media opportunity.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
We should all remember that "progress" comes quickly to those who take steps to get there. By slowing our steps (funding less) we end up slowing the progression toward the technological singularity.
Just one out of many things that this slowing will cause is the life expectancy to be less than the maximum potential of the currently living human and future populations. So not funding science and technology will in effect cause the people who don't fund it to die sooner as well as the rest of us that make political frame work out of engineering and science.
We should be investing heavily in technology, since the first country to reach that technological singularity will be able to be dominant over countries who do not reach it as soon...and the gap only gets bigger as time progresses.
I hate to say "Woosh", but...
"My wallet is lighter than ever!" doesn't strike you as a joke?
Given that acupuncture fails a double blind, it's not that useful
The rich benefit disproportionally from stability. Put it this way: How much happier is each segment of the population living here than any backwards place in the world with little police and poor sanitation?
The rich have everything to lose; they are usually making their money from large businesses that could suffer or fail entirely without police, without the sanitation necessary for cities, and without fairly stable government (taxes, property ownership/deeds, etc). If they lived in a place like that, a huge number of costs would appear--armed security guards, bribes, custom-built sanitation, etc. Oh, there would still be rich people, as indeed there are, but they'd almost certainly be terrified every day that organized crime may come knocking on their door and take away their money, their children, their goods, or their lives. Compared to that, taxes are a percentage of their income. Where would you live?
The middle-income (who are generally tradesmen) benefit a great deal, because they depend on people paying them fairly for their knowledge, their ability, or their goods, but they are not balanced on the edge of a knife. They aren't extremely obvious targets, but they'll probably deal with a certain number of criminals every year. They probably know how to, or have the resources to, acquire sanitation, but it's on a personal/familial scale, not distributed across an entire company's holdings. In general, they probably prefer to live wherever they were born, because they know the ins and outs of the place.
Poor people in first-world countries have to work every day, may hardly get breaks, are treated poorly, live in crappy housing, and if they're stuck with a knife, often there's not a lot that people will do. They have it better than poor people in third world countries, but how much better? Especially when they're taxed for the luxury of living in your country--which will be robbing them of purchasing power that they may desperately need?
Hmm, with all the advances recently in biotech/nanotech, we should really cut back on the worlds military budgets (a world-wide tax so as to level the playing field perhaps?)....AND we take a small amount of this money and put it into funding projects like the SENS project and the Mprize and open cures projects.....these projects are working to control and reverse aging through research into the mechanisms of aging and cell repair and the development of therapies to boos the exsting stem cell repair envieroments of our bodies and also things like growing replacement, printing replacement organs, the developement of exsting nanotechnologies to control and eliminate cancers, the development of advanced programmable methods of reprogramming our cellular dna programs in our cells, the development of advanced programmable nanobots to diagnose and repair our cells from the inside out. Good sites to stay informed....http://www.kurzweilai.net/ http://www.fightaging.org/ http://www.sens.org/ http://www.mprize.org/
The scientific community needs to come together over the issue of energy so that we can get around this fundamental problem. I was greatly disappointed when the SCC project was cancelled, but years later the energy problem remains, looming ominously, portending our inevitable destruction. It is long past due for us to get our act together and solve this once and for all. The average person has very little understanding of energy (let along net energy), does not believe in Global Warming, and can't see why poor people don't work! Plenty of voters are convinced that changing parties in the White House will automatically bring in a solution. We're drowning in ignorance, and with less energy available it's getting worse. Let's stop what we're doing, educate ourselves on the Molten Salt Reactor, promote a major Thorium Race R&D project, and get our society moving again in the right direction. If we can do that, then we can surely have our flying cars, luxury cruises, space travel, super space telescopes, and social services for everyone.
out of 10 people, 1 person pays almost the entire bill, 4 people pay a little bit, and the remaining 5 pay nothing at all
This is a classic Big Lie, which has been repeated so often that not only does the right wing now treat it as gospel, but the left wing is starting to let it slide in debates. In reality, when you look at the total tax burden (not just the narrowly defined "federal income tax," which does not include the FICA taxes that everyone with a paycheck pays) of federal, state, and local taxes, poor people pay an equal or higher percentage of their income in taxes than rich people do. You can argue all day about whether you think this is a good thing or not, but as the saying goes, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I hate to say "Woosh", but...
It's pretty obvious that YodasEvilTwin saw that was a joke that was critical of Chiropractors, and responded by attempted to defend the profession.
Chiropractory is not evidence based medicine
But, then again neither is the spinal fusion racket.
That surgey can be a godsend to some, but those doctors who push it on those who don't need it are just as much quacks as any Chiropractor, and frankly deserve a special place in hell
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-30/highest-paid-u-s-doctors-get-rich-with-fusion-surgery-debunked-by-studies.html
It's not that simple.
For instance, as the other poster said, Nutrition is not "straight up medicine", it's alternative medicine, at least here in the USA. Doctors here don't consider nutrition AT ALL when dealing with patients; as far as they're concerned, your diet of Big Macs and Cokes couldn't possibly be the cause of your high blood pressure. Instead, they just look at your symptoms, look up a medicine on their PDA that is indicated for treating those symptoms, and prescribe that for you.
There really isn't much to being an American doctor other than looking up symptoms and finding matching pharmaceuticals. They're little more than pushers for the Pharmaceutical industry.
The rise of alternative medicines is, IMO, a reaction to a massive failure by the regular medical establishment to provide good patient care without simply resorting to expensive drugs that have many negative side-effects.
The critical difference is that, in your example, the patient is actually taking some of the substance they are allergic to, and increasing the amount over time as the immune system adapts to its presence—a response consistent with rational models we have constructed from empirical evidence. In homeopathy the level of dilution is such that it is statistically unlikely that there is any of the substance left, and the mechanism by which the resulting placebo is to effect a cure amounts to "by magic".
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I completely disagree. My wife suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for decades, visiting all kinds of expensive mainstream doctors, and none of them ever bringing her relief. Finally, she found out about gluten sensitivity (different from Celiac disease), cut the gluten out of her diet (not easy in the US), and it's mostly gone. Did any doctors ever ask her about this or suggest this? Nope.
Nutrition is NOT part of mainstream western medicine, at least not in the USA (it may be different in other countries). Here, all doctors do is look up your symptoms on a chart and find a pharmaceutical that claims to treat them, and prescribe it for you. They do NOT ask about diet. You can be severely obese, have high blood pressure, and live on a diet of Big Macs, fries and Cokes, and they'll give you medicine for the high blood pressure without questioning your diet.
Now, "modern science" may indeed have diagnosed nutrition-related diseases, but that science hasn't been taught to any mainstream doctors here in the USA. All they're taught is what the Pharma companies' sales reps teach them.
That's not quite like homeopathy: in homeopathy, the bit you're allergic to is diluted so much that there's nothing left. The "memories" of this item in the water is supposed to cure you.
The problem is that mainstream doctors don't bother with prescribing "healthy eating & rigorous exercise regimens". If it can't be treated with a Big Pharma drug, they throw up their hands. Much of the success of Chiropractors is probably due to them adopting these common-sense solutions, and then throwing in some hocus pocus to sound good and charge more.
It has been claimed that it doesn't. The claim is: government funded research was, for all modern purposes, non-existent before 1920, and yet the pace of development and growth in science, technology and wealth remained constant into the modern day.
the rich benefit disproportionately from government services, they should pay their fair share for them.
The top 1% already pay more Federal income taxes than the entire bottom 95% combined.
You're aware that more than 50% of taxpayers pay no Federal income tax, right?
So what do you propose we do, somehow force "the rich" (in quotes as Obama defines anyone, including small businesses, that *gross* (not net) >= $200K/year as "rich" (a hotdog vendor can easily gross $200K...I don't consider hotdog vendors part of the corporate-jet class) to produce wealth & jobs in an innovative and competitive manner?
Do we hold their kids & spouses hostage and threaten to kill them unless they create more marketable & profitable ideas & products and employ more people, if we've removed the motivation of having a chance at "getting rich"?
Also, the "rich" have already paid for roads and other infrastructure. It wouldn't exist otherwise, as government had to get the money to build them in the first place, and government does not create wealth, only take it by threat of force from others. Do we keep making them pay over & over for what they already paid for?
What will you do when progressively-higher taxes & ever-more regulation have driven all the corporations and "rich" out of the country, and caused jobs to disappear and prices for housing, energy, & food to skyrocket? I've never gotten a job from a poor person.
Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money.
Because that money has ALREADY been spent on so called "Alt-Med" and the results disproved it.
In-fact your wording is that the money will go to "prove" it meaning that the money wouldn't go to science at all. Scientific research isn't spent to prove anything. It is spent to test hypothesis.
Funny how hypotheses work out better depending on who's financing of the research.
Funny how when one patent expires they can find a 'slightly different' better drug, and funny how after a while the results of the first research are found out to be not quite good after a second research.
But of course, since it's "evidence based medicine" you can find a paper that corroborates the drug whose kind manufacturer invited you for a conference last year at the Bahamas, all expenses payed...
how long until
test
Cuts happen, it's just the way it is, stupid or not. There are a few things we could do to actually improve the research infrastructure in the country and get more out of the money we do have.
Primarily: stop giving out grants, move everything to industry style contracts. It's time to recognize that industrial research labs and academic research labs are operating on the same level. This does a few things: it allows the government to specify public ownership of research results (right now Universities keep their IP and defense contractors do not... odd, yes?), second, it leads to the normalization of lab pay. If you're on a contract, you should be paid the professional rate. Graduate tuition is simply academic administrators picking the government's pocket, things need to move to the cost plus fee model used in industrial contracts. Under a contract, that money would be moved over toward salary and benefits instead, a very good thing. A school could continue with the myth that their "students" are part time workers who require large amounts of "training", but then a government contracting officer could actually require proof of that statement, and details of the "training" being done.
Another thing that would help would be an acknowledgement that not everyone is cut out to run a lab. Long term research positions for people with PhDs should be viable career options rather than "spouse" prizes. There are many, many people out there who are great researchers and great team leaders, but can't write a grant to save their life. We still want those people to succeed at research.
Ok... long enough... essentially, anyone who tells you there isn't waste/fraud/abuse in scientific funding is full of BS, we can still do a lot better. If we're not willing to try to improve, we're going to keep losing money.
To respond to both of you, modern nutrition is a tremendously open field for research. We still haven't begun to plumb the depths of what is optimally healthy concerning nutrition and how it relates to age, genetics, epigenetics, metabolic pathways, gender, micro vs. macro nutrients, pollution and introduced chemicals in our diets, endocrinology, immune response and allergens, stress, and the complex relationship between food and psychology. It would be a fair thing to say that the vast majority of modern diseases we experience in developed countries today have their roots in diet and nutrition or the lack thereof.
I wasn't aware that one could subscribe to medicine - only newspapers, magazines, and other media.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Actually we should fund homeopathics, homeopathically. Give them a dollars and tell them is should have the impact of millions of dollars, then to go and sin no more.
That's funny. My Doctor (a real Doctor, not an alternative-medicine "doctor") out in California was dead-set on using medications as a last resort. Diet changes, activity adjustments etc all took priority.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Yeah, sure, but the question is whether the effects of diet that we don't understand are vastly greater than the effects of diet that we do understand (note that a diet that provides a modern set of micro-nutrients and a reasonable number of calories already works pretty good...).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Actually, something rather like homeopathy's ridiculous dilution does work for some food allergies. You start by taking a tiny bit of whatever it is you're allergic to. Then you take a tiny bit more. It's called oral immunotherapy.
Oral Immunotherapy and Homeopathy are nothing alike.
Why? Because as you say the former involves taking a "tiny bit" of something that you are allergic to and slowly increasing the amount and thus "training" your immune system.
Homeopathy on the other hand requires you to dilute the substance to such a degree that all is left is solvent (water, alcohol, etc.). There is none of the original material that is being dissolved left!
In other words. Your "tiny bit" of food is an absolutely massive amount in comparison to no food at all and even if the homeopath decides to not dilute to the point to which they claim to do a "tiny bit" of food will probably amount to a few grams vs the femtograms left over after a series of dilutions.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
He's very unique among American doctors then.
You really have never heard of a doctor subscribing drugs to a patient?
Am I mixing up subscribe with some similar sounding word or do you just not live in North America?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
... but if you pick the obvious fields - those at the cutting edge of physics or astronomy or biotech - it's phenomenally expensive. And for the huge majority of scientists, they're never likely to make a contribution that will recoup that cost in the form of any kind of public benefit. So it makes perfect sense for the huge majority of scientists to be working on applied science, as paid for by big pharma, aerospace, electronics etc., where their priorities are set by commercial imperatives.
I'd be perfectly happy to see governments get out of 'big science' funding entirely. You want to find the Higgs boson? - fine, but why should the taxpayer fork out billions of dollars just to satisfy your intellectual curiosity? There must be cheaper ways to keep you off the streets.
There's been a "War on Cancer" since before I was born and they still don't have a cure - today you get cancer and die 2 years later unless you're a fucking statistical outlier. Shitcan the money for cancer research, cancer centers and especially the cruellest of all, "children's" cancer centers, which specialize in taking parents' last dollars in a futile attempt to save a cancer-ridden child.
And string theory, my God, please put a wooden stake in it!
I'm really tired of people who pay almost no taxes complaining that the people who pay almost all the taxes don't pay enough taxes.
What's up with this box everyone has to think inside of or outside of? Why does there have to be a box?
Nice way to stick that one in... How about tax cuts for ALL Americans? Or just tax cuts for AMERICANS. Instead, you're complaining about people making $XYZk a year as being the reason the next update to general relativity isn't made.
The nice thing about tax cuts is it put the money back in the hands of the person whose money it is.... the Taxpayer. If you feel that the blue-sky R&D is important (like I do), then go cut a check (like I do). Don't confiscate from others to venture on your own (cf the Electric Car story above)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
*has a hard time holding the line against government health care or tax cuts for middle class Americans.*
See? no politics at all.
Bad doctors don't make the whole field bogus.
"for example, US particle physicists who will spend their careers trying to drive from the backseat as our European counterparts run the Large Hadron Collider"
Research is about long term goals and decisions.
The above is not an example, the SSC was supposed to be leading the way instead of the LHC, but that was killed nearly 20yrs ago. LHC was not planned as the top science facility, but became so as a result of short term thinking.
Since the 80's we've been thinking about short term goals, short term profits, short term efforts, and... short term research. Why? Cause look at the culture (ok, I have to say it: baby boomers).... it's all about short term egos wanting results now before they folks are "put out to pasture". From that, "collaboration" promotes fast information handling and demands quick results.
Unfortunately, the Internet promotes that same short fuse idea, which corporations, universities & gov'ts have literally dunked the head in the kool aid.
I think so. We use "prescribe" but I've not used medical services when I've been out of the country, so I don't actually know if this is a locality thing?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You know, come to think of it... I'm pretty sure she was either a Chinese or Japanese immigrant. Definitly one of those, though I can't say I remember enough detail to say which. The name sounded like "Jow" so I guess Chinese?
Good Doctor - I miss her.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
India's already doing that and built on the thorium expertise the USA had years ago, plus their experts are still alive and below retirement age. The USA has missed the bus on that one unless they want to poach and play catchup.
The decline in almost all fields has been going on for a long time.
Hmm, you might be right but I suspect that both are used.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Drop the drama. It's a USA problem, created entirely within its own borders.
The rest of us don't give a shit. Sure, we'll be hurt by some fallout. Probably in our investment portfolios if we don't make some adjustments.
You need to stop listening so much to the Austrian School jerk-offs...
1. Trying to get anything out of the non-paying 5 is about as effective as trying to squeeze blood from a stone. They don't have the money, that's why they aren't paying.
People in Somalia are in poverty. People in the Sudan "don't have the money." You're average US household who claims poverty absolutely does have the money to pay, and that ten bucks a month times many tens of millions does start to add up. When people become part of the suppliers of government revenue (however small), suddenly they are a lot more critical of how their money is spent, and this is a Good Thing.
2. The guy who's paying almost the entire bill has the ability to make the rules about who gets what
Come again? The rich "fat cats" that are demonized in the current class-warfare climate are households who make more than $200k per year. At that rate, you could blow a half-year's salary on one plate at an Obama fund raiser. The super-powers of political lobbies are not the small businesses who are considered "the rich," they are the corporate unions and political action groups. I'm not saying that the free-market advocates don't have their share of kickbacks, but at least on that side we get to duke it out ourselves. With all our money going directly to The Party, what choice do we ever have?
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Riiight... Modern medicine is all just a big conspiracy...
Granted there is some abuse but no there is no great conspiracy against Alternative medicines. Bribery can only cover a drug's flaws for so long eventually doctors and patients notice that it doesn't work or that side effects keep coming up.
What we are talking about here for so-called "Alt-Med" or any other form of your standard quackery, are treatments that have already been dis-proven repeatedly in the literature with studies that include little things like double-blind set-ups and large sample sizes.
You could cut all funding for scientific research or 10% from Defense. In the former cause you would decimate the American university system, and the economy as a whole. In the latter case you might have to do without the Joint Strike Fighter (the total cost of which is ten times the entire research budget) or about four nuclear subs. In neither case would you even put a dent in overall spending. A bit more perspective: federal spending on research is equal to approximately %30 of the amount paid for interest on the National Debt.
Fighting over rounding errors in the budget like funding for research, the top income tax rate, education, etc. is simply another way to divert attention from Defense and Health and Human Services, which are by themselves larger than the economies of many countries.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
I work my fucking ass off...I make damn good money/year...and I'm as subserviant to the corporate overlords today as I was 15 years ago. I scrimp and save & never get ahead, while the bigwigs bought a new 5+ million dollar house this year. Why?
Because you're comfortable being a wage-slave.
If you weren't, you'd figure out some way to start your own business. Don't tell me you need some rich guy or the government to give you anything to do it, either. You're just too fuckin' lazy and too fuckin' cowardly to stop whining and start doing and taking risks.
What, you think the rich got that money fuckin' handed to them? You think it was just luck?
No.
They got off their lazy asses, quit feeling sorry for themselves, and thinking the fuckin' world owes them anything. It don't. Not even a fuckin' tombstone when your ass is dead.
I started my own business after I got out of the fuckin' hospital after surviving nearly dying, with literally not a dime to my name, no credit nor even any sort of vehicle, and a shit-ton of medical bills. I started working for someone else long enough to buy a few tools, some business cards, a phone, and worked out of a shit-tastic $300/mo studio apartment. I did whatever (legal) somebody would pay me enough to do.
After surviving on fuckin' Ramen noodles for about two years, I saved enough to rent a closet-sized shop-space and starved some more for a few years while I poured every fuckin' penny I could back into my business. I didn't go out to eat. I didn't go to movies. I didn't go to bars/clubs, party, or buy a big-screen or the latest/greatest fuckin' game console or PC.
Now, I've got a relatively successful business and a couple employees, and I've paid off my medical bills.
There's this concept called "work" and another called "sacrifice". I'm no fuckin' genius, I've got no rare or unusual skills or talents, and no college.
I'm simply willing to work and sacrifice to succeed without expecting the fuckin' government to take it from someone else that worked and sacrificed for what *he* fuckin' made, to give it to me.
As long as you're content to settle for the shit someone else is willing to give you for some shit-job, that shit-job is all you'll ever have.
So please, spare me your fuckin' whining ya baby, and keep your fuckin' paws off what *I*, and nobody else, fuckin' worked and starved for.
I'm fuckin' glad there weren't a lot of lazy, worthless, whining & bitching fucks like you around to fight WW2 or settle the fuckin' frontier!
Fuckin' grow a set already, or STFU and get out of the fuckin' way! This is for keeps!
Stop making up facts. Or regurgitating what the tea party told you to say. Look up some hard numbers about taxation and income. Although the top brackets pay more, they also make more. Surprisingly, the percentage of tax income from the top percentages is less than the percentage of wealth they earn. And federal taxes don't pay for roads, fuel taxes do. Infrastructure, except in certain specific cases, has been laid down by regulated corporations. You live in a fantasy world propagated by lies.
"In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for 'Science.' The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc."
How would you go about testing acupuncture in a double-blind way? Give the one set of doctors needles, the other toothpicks? Teach one set of doctors the wrong techniques so that they stick needles in random places? Must have been an interesting study.
Many big companies used to invest in long term research, and some still do: IBM, Google, Microsoft, Xerox, Nokia, and others. In addition to their own research labs, they also have been paying for university research, gave scholarships, collaborating with researchers, participating in the scientific community, etc.
A company that hasn't been doing any significant research in 15 years is... Apple. All Apple ever does is suck up other people's research results and computer science graduates, charge inflated prices to students, and write inane patents.
If Apple's irresponsible business model catches on (invest everything in marketing, design, and lawyers), there isn't going to be a US computer industry in a decade or two.
Sometimes less money triggers better research.
A single decently fed exceptional brain plus paper and pencil is likely to produce more significant results than huge Ponzi-like technological projects.
The gigantic billion dollar ITER (nuclear fusion) project is the perfect example of misdirected public funding of "fundamental" research.
What Science needs most is not money, it is more freedom to investigate for the brightest minds.
Don't repeat their talking points - it's not "austerity", that term is incorrectly be used to describe the destruction of social support networks across the globe, and it's a deliberate decision to make the working class stiffs pay for the regulatory fuckups and criminal acts of the wealthy. Cutting grandma's pension check in half is not "austerity" - it's fucking theft.
Defunding public body research is shortsighted ignorant stupidity - fundamental research is our ONLY possible solution to the impending global climate change doom, we're all too selfish and lazy to do the "right" thing and cut our consumptions. This Joerg Heber is trying to sugar coat the bad news instead of confronting the issues at hand. Whatever - it makes for more fluff in the blathersphere, so it's all good anyway, right ?
This is not an accident.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
It would seem to me much, much, more unfair if five people would have to sacrifice all of their livelihood, 4 people had sacrifice much of it, and 1 person had to pay a negligible portion of theirs.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Wait, if you're replying to someone, calling them out on their mistake, haven't they already posted, and hence are not capable of modding you troll?
(Mods, mod me troll! I double dare you!)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
>we take a small amount of this money and put it into funding projects like the SENS project and the Mprize and open cures projects.
What's the point?
I can understand the emotional appeal of reducing infant mortality, and various cancers that kill people "before their time".
But extending the life of Granpa Joe out a century?
Not to mention the fact that your listed programs project themselves to be a benevolent enterprise, but exactly what would be benevolent about permanently increasing the world population, without the current automatic reduction?
Not only that, but with aging ruled out as a cause of death, that would make any other deaths seem much more tragic. You'd get even more "saving lives" rhetoric than now, and helmets required for even walking around.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Nope, it's only "prescribe". Using subscribe in that instance is about on par with a kid asking to have pasketti for dinner or saying supposably instead of supposedly.
I think one confusion is that when most people use the word "homeopathy" they aren't referring to literal homeopathy (ie, diluting a tiny amount of something down to a few molecules). Homeopathy, for most people I've met, refers to all herbal or natural medicine. For example, taking cranberry pills for a UTI, or drinking tea with honey is considered homeopathy.
Try googling various homeopathy-related phrases and you'll find that, barring the Wikipedia entry that always comes up first, most of them are about herbal medicine and remedies in general, many of which are verified by medical research.
Riiight... Modern medicine is all just a big conspiracy...
Granted there is some abuse but no there is no great conspiracy against Alternative medicines. Bribery can only cover a drug's flaws for so long eventually doctors and patients notice that it doesn't work or that side effects keep coming up.
Depends on the definition of Modern. I'd say that, for the last 100 years it's been a huge success. So much it's "almost irrelevant" now.
With some exceptions, people almost never get sick (except for seasonal diseases, the occasional food poisoning, accidents, etc). And most of these cases are effectively treated, with the exception of some cases of cancer.
But for the last, let's say, 20 years, they are taking the whole 'evidence based medicine' thing too seriously and measuring what effectively amounts to noise.
What we are talking about here for so-called "Alt-Med" or any other form of your standard quackery, are treatments that have already been dis-proven repeatedly in the literature with studies that include little things like double-blind set-ups and large sample sizes.
Sure, there are a lot of stupid quackery like mushrooms against cancer, or HIV does not cause AIDS. I see the issue as this:
1 - The patient has 100% authority over what treatment he gets. If he wants to drink water to fight cancer, so be it (with the exception of kids, of course)
2 - absense of evidence is not evidence of absence. If studies have not uncovered an explanation for why something may have an effect, it doesn't mean there isn't.
3 - Modern medicine has erred several times, and erring on the side of caution is erring as well. See H Pylori.
how long until
"The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and security of a new dark age" H.P. Lovecraft- The Call of Cthulu
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
OK finally got out the dictionary and a definition for sub... fits perfectly: "To authorize (someone) to receive or access ..."
+ google has in-numeral hits of "subscribe medication"
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If you had better reading comprehension skills you would realize that I even admitted that I didn't trust those numbers. The phrase
...the last numbers I saw suggested that...
is a dead give away. I will also point out that your phrase
...$1.3 trillion so far...
suggests that you are summing up the total amount that has been calculated since the implementation of the Bush tax cuts. Without a reference I can not verify that number so lets assume it is true for the moment. The tax cuts were implement in 2001 and 2003 but to make this argument lets just take 2003 as the start data and average the yearly revenue loss at $220 billion per year. ($1.3tril/6 years - yes I'm trying to raise this number as much as possible to support your argument.)
The total deficit for fiscal year 2010 was estimated at $1.42 trillion - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget. Ok lets see $1.4 trillion minus $0.22 trillion is $0. Wow, you are right we can solve all our yearly budge problems by taxing the rich! Oh wait I think I made a mistake in my math somewhere but since you are so smart I'll let you figure out where.
I will admit I should have been clearer that I was talking about the federal budget deficit not the debt. Dealing with the debt is a whole other can of worms which can't be addressed until we have dealt with the deficit.
Oh please. Fucking suck it cunt.
Take risks...yeah...I would love to drop the 9-5 wage slaving & start my own business. But guess what? I have fucking obligations...I have kids that are soon off to college, and I scrimped and saved for the last 20 fucking years so that they won't have to worry about the cost of their education. I have kids that need to eat fucking healthier shit than fucking ramen noodles for 2 fucking years. Risk...please...some arrogant fuck with $0 to his name with no job, family, or hope can take risks...the rest of us have to actually be fucking responsible for the well being of other people. Must be nice to have nobody to worry about but yourself.
I don't want or need a fucking handout from fucking anyone. Everything I have in my life I have fucking worked my balls off for, and I would call myself "successful" - but I'm hardly wealthy by any definition.
What, you think the rich got that money fuckin' handed to them? You think it was just luck?
For far too many of the rich...you're fucking right they got that money handed to them and/or luck. Yes, there are exceptions...of course. My corporate overlords here? Handed millions from wealthy lineages...now granted, they've grown that wealth to astronomical levels...but they had a fucking starting point...they didn't have to work up form $0, and for most of the truely rich...either they had some seed, or some insane natural (read: genetic) talent that allowed them to come up with something that the majority of us mere mortals would be incapable of.
Shit, I look at my parents...they have money, but I would hardly call them rich either. Dad worked his fucking ass off for years...but on the same token, Dad had a start given to him in the form of a section of farmland. That starting point has lead him to be successful and "wealthy" if not rich...but not so rich that I could get the same massive starting block that he had.
Congratulations (sincerely) on being one of the VERY few success stories out there...believe me, I understand the work and sacrifice you put in to get there. But for every story like yours, there are the stories of thousands of bankrupt and destitute people who took the chances and fucking fell flat on their face.
For a majority of people, the American Dream of success and wealth is a fucking lie that will NEVER be achieved.
I'm not even talking about taxation here anymore, or handouts, or anyone paying their share...I'm talking about the fact that a majority of people will start their lives in poverty, subserviant to the corporate machine...and will fucking end their lives in the same depressing shithole. So yeah...the "rich" start to be fucking demonized for being self-serving fucks with no care to anything but growing their bank accounts. Seriously, do you give two fucks about your staff & their own financial success? Or are they just people to increase the size of your bank account? If the second...fuck you, you're part of the fucking problem. If the first...then you are one of the few success stories where you haven't become a flaming asshole only out for himself. Granted, by your fucked up little hissy fit, I guess you're just a fucking asshole that only cares about his bank balance.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake...you are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else.
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If you redefine middle class sure that works. We have already done that quite often though. In reality middle class means as rich as aristocracy without the privilege, we generally use it to mean people making a liveable but not huge income.
If you household income is more than a standard deviation larger or smaller than the median income I would say you are no longer middle class by the modern US definition.
How much of can you really sacrifice? I bet a lot. "The Man" isn't holding you back it is yourself. You are finding excuses not solutions.
Everyone has a different set of circumstances, You have a family and kids. Ok... I have heard of people with fare more liabilities to made it successfully.
If you want to start a business those kids of you can be used as cheap labor, to help your business get off its feet. Their are business loans that you can get if you get, that will help pay you during the beginning period. If you work from 9-5 what do you do from 5:00-12:00 You can use that time to figure out how to find solutions to these problems, and get paperwork ready for loans or start part of the business as after hours part time.
A lot of people like to work from 9-5 get paid enough to survive and live well. It isn't slavery it is a choice, they don't want to work harder in life so they accecpt that they won't be rich in a trade off of a comfortable modest life, with time to live for themselves. That is a good choice as well.
But stop saying how the rich have it So MUCH better while I have so little when you are afraid of even trying to succeed. If you tried and you had some force trying to hold you back from succeeding eg. Government saying You must do this (like in Communism), or being born into a Cast that will not allow you to better yourself, that would be different as there is a Force that you can identify as holding you back. But who is "The Man" that is holding you back... It is you.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They've done it where toothpicks were twiddled against the person's skin, giving them the impression that they had a needle stuck in. It was equally effective as "real" acupuncture because the effect is all in the mind.
Nutrition is part of medicine whether or not the drug companies have paid off many doctors and medical schools. Ignorance of a topic does not alter the nature of the topic.
Ignorance of a topic does not alter the nature of the topic. Nutrition is part of medicine whether or not the drug companies have paid off many doctors and medical schools.
No, it's not. Something that isn't actually practiced by doctors in substantial numbers is not "part of medicine", no matter what a few academics might assert about the field. What is "part of medicine" is whatever actual doctors in the field practice on a daily basis.
Just as an example, let's try changing a word in your post:
"Phrenology is part of medicine whether or not the drug companies have paid off many doctors and medical schools. Ignorance of a topic does not alter the nature of the topic."
No one practices phrenology any more (for good reason), so clearly it's not part of medicine, even if there are a few crackpots out there somewhere who might still believe it. Same goes for something that really should be part of medicine, but is not actively practiced or taught.
I said federal income tax, since we're talking about federal issues.
The lower half has an absurdly high tax rate when you include FICA, State and Municipal taxes. FICA/SS/Medi* also need to be fixed, and as a percentege of income, effect the lower 75% more than than upper.
The fight is just becoming, "FUCK THE RICH", rather than the Tax system is broken, the spending system is broken and they need to be fixed for everyone.
You implied every single point to suggest the system was rigged only to protect the rich, as you intentionally rigged up the straw man yourself. You literally attacked my counter points because they provided a much broader example usage than you did.
Entirely to scam people both with and without bank accounts. Often people go to those places to hide money from their spouse as well; if the money never hits the bank account, then the spouse never knows it exists.
You either don't understand what a straw man is, or you think it's only okay to use when you're arguing (likely because that's the only way you can make points).
I thought as much, but this makes the study single blind, not double, as the practitioners involved did know whether they were handling needles or toothpicks. A true double blind test can effectively only be done with some substance, a medicine for example, where also the people administrating the drugs don't know whether they are given a placebo or the real thing. This to remove any bias where the patients pick up the facts from their behavior.
They've also done needles encased in a plastic tube that the acupuncturist can't see. Some of them have a needle that penetrates the skin, some don't.
Well that is pretty clever, and would make it double blind. I honestly was curious how to do a double blind on acupuncture, and this could conceivably work. Thanks.