Slashdot Mirror
US Scientific R&D Could Face Fiscal Cliff Doom
The tough economic times have had a huge effect on scientific research and development funding. The looming "fiscal cliff" may be the last straw for many programs. "The American science programs that landed the first man on the moon, found cures for deadly diseases and bred crops that feed the world now face the possibility of becoming relics in the story of human progress.
American scientific research and development stands to lose thousands of jobs and face a starvation diet of reduced funding if politicians fail to compromise and halt the United States' march towards the fiscal cliff's sequestration of federal funds."
into armed conflict by private banks, who, through their monetary policy are exerting undue political influence on the White House. It matters not which party sits in power, they have very little choice but to do what they are doing.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
From TFA: "1,082,370 U.S. citizens employed in the life sciences, such as biology and genetics, as well as physical and social sciences. Of these, approximately 31,000"
Wow, those are some massive cuts. An entire whopping 3% of the people may lose their jobs!
People just don't get it. The US government does not need to cut its budget by 3%. It needs to cut its budget by 50% or more. Many programs and federal departments need eliminated entirely. It's not even about the $16 Trillion debt. If the government ran honest accounts, it's about the $200 Trillion debt.
Don't worry, citizens of America. That's only some $650,000 per person that the government has borrowed on behalf of each and every one of you. No problem, right?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The problem is not the cut itself, but where the cut is being made. Remember news reports that the U.S. government spends more on air conditioning for troops in Afghanistan than the entire budget of NASA?
Does not that then suggests that the government should cut back on military spending? But no, they prefer to cut NASA's budget. After the priority is to blow people and clog the banksters with money.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Vital, down-and-dirty national spending and revenue decisions have been put off for GENERATIONS. We are staring doom in the face. Can salvation be found solely in science spending? Of course not. But does every single budget item and all tax policies and rates need to be on the table and without any sacred cows? HELL YES. And then the specific choices should be wise ones.
Without firm specifics at hand, I still feel very confident that there is 3% of utterly useless fat that could be trimmed from science funding. That's all we're talking about here.
P.S. - I admit that I see no sign whatsoever that seriously addressing the general situation is anywhere near the radar of the fools leading the nation - fools that WE installed. Profound differences over what needs to be done exist. FINE. OF COURSE they exist. But these losers won't even engage. That represents the most disgusting, reprehensible behavior which is possible to imagine.
The financial parasites that don't actually do anything or produce anything useful have recovered their massive bonuses already, but we are cutting back on people who actually produce thins that improve the quality of life.
"The German science programs that landed the first man on the moon" - Corrected
We are not witnessing the decline of Western Civilisation, what we are seeing is the decline of a once-great Nation that has badly lost its way.
The financial problems of the US (and consequently the rest of the World) were caused by greed and stupidity - banks lending too much money to people who had no realistic prospect of paying off the loans, which in turn became 'toxic' debts.
The US has also got itself into the ridiculous situation of pissing-off half the World and as a result is now commited to spending un-sustainable ammounts of money on the Military.
As for science and science spending (which this thread is supposed to be about), well what do you expect. In a Nation where it seems half the population don't believe in Global Warming and the other half don't believe in Evolution, and science/technology is based on patenting curved corners then profiting from the resultant litigation, what chance does 'real' science stand?
Smivs on the intertubes!
I don't know if it's even possible for most people to be rational on this issue but I'll make a stab at it.
Is it scientific spending that is bankrupting the US government?
No it is not.
This is NOT where the cut should come. The cut should be everything else.
I won't state what should be cut because things are so ideological and people are so irrational on the subject that their eyes will roll back into their heads and start foaming at the mouth. But I think we can all agree that it isn't scientific spending that is generating the US debt.
Very well. Cut what is driving spending up.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
We just kicked the president of Egypt in the teeth by threatening his pipeline of money via "Foreign Aid" into doing the right thing in this war between Israel and the Palestinians, resulting in the continued existence of our only really friendly country in the middle east, and in our not having to get involved militarily ourselves to achieve that. Without "foreign aid", we'd either have to abandon Israel to annihilation by the Muslim Hordes, or come to their aid with troops.
IOW, we're getting a lot of bang for our "foreign aid" buck, or more properly renamed, our "bribe to behave" which is what foreign aid really is.
The whole "fiscal cliff" doom the fox network is spreading (check who owns redneck eh discovery) just means that if congress digs in its heels and does nothing the President gets his way by default because tax breaks that the repubicans want to extend and increase for the rich will END!
Obama can just sit back and relax if he has the balls, he can get far more taxes by simply waiting out the republicans then trying to bargain with them. The smarter republicans know this (both of them) and are not at all please with their redneck counterparts trying to create a crisis that only exist in republican eyes.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Maybe it would help if you looked at the budget. Of about $3.5 trillion for 2012, approximately 2/3 is for social programs and entitlements. The other 1/3 is discretionary. The military is in the discretionary side. So "maintaining the empire" isn't the problem, it never was (and given how the rest of the world effects the U.S., having a strong military is likely worth the expense). Oh, and only about $700 billion is military, and much of that is spent in the U.S., so cutting it means less industry, less employed people, etc.
How about withdrawing tax benefits given to religious groups and instead tax Churches like any other business and use the money to fund tax breaks for science. As far as I can see science has done many things to make our lives better in recent years where as religion has just stood in the way of the progress of science.
Whoever makes the budget gets paid last.
It's just that simple.
If there's no money left, then Congress should get no pay until the situation is fixed.
What rate would you set this Fair Tax at so that you would raise enough money to fund all the programmes you need to fund?
Would you have different rates for different classes of goods? E.g., gas/electricity, baby clothes, food, luxury goods, cars, ...
What about the problem that rich people simply don't spend all their money, therefore a fair tax could actually just mean they pay even less money than they do now on their earnings (tax avoidance notwithstanding). There's only so many sports cars you can buy.
There is an argument to introduce VAT whilst reducing corporation tax - corporations are offshoring more and more of their money in order to avoid tax, so you should just get the tax at the point of sale instead.
In reality governments merely tweak the tax rules because doing a major change will be highly disruptive.
The Fair Tax is described in detail at www.fairtax.org, and I support that. The tax rate, effectively, is 30% as most people calculate taxes, although the Fair Tax info describes it as 23%, which is the amount of tax on the total price+tax amount.
The Fair Tax is designed to replace the amount of revenue raised by the current income tax, although the happy situation is that the income tax revenues have fallen lately, so the Fair Tax would actually generate more revenue than the income taxes do now.
The Fair Tax gets its strength from growing the economy. We would be so knee-deep in industrial activity that, eventually, we would be able to fund everything without cutting anything. That sort of projection isn't at the website, but just something that seems logical from the highly unusual situation in having an industrialized country with no income tax. We'd be the only place on the planet like that, and, with that being such a good deal for industry, we'd be a gigantic industrial magnet. I believe the projections for the success of the Fair Tax are greatly understated, and that the Fair Tax is _the_ answer for our economic problems.
Oh, and only about $700 billion is military, and much of that is spent in the U.S., so cutting it means less industry, less employed people, etc.
The GP is right. You must be blinded by "imperialism syndrome" to address 700 BILLIONS of Dollars with the adverb "just".
A lot of the problems USA faces today is the result of the very same policy you're defending as if means "more industries, more employed people, etc".
We must talking about efficiency. USA took 10 years and 2 TRILLION Dollars and something just to kill a single man. USA is clearly holding, I mean, doing something very wrong.
Granted, I'm not saying everything is wrong, neither that all the military expenses are unnecessary...
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
For the last 12 years, they've pointed out over and over that the primary cause of our budget woes is Medicare/Medicaid and to a lesser extent Social Security.
Forgetting about a couple of unfunded wars are we? Or a military that outspends the combined budget of the next 15 largest militaries combined for no obvious reason? Medicare and Defense are the big budget problems. Social Security not so much.
Social Security is not funded like Medicare or Defense. It was only last year that expenses exceeded non-interest income and it won't be until 2021 at present funding that total expenses exceed total revenues. Social Security is fully funded and what funding problems it has are fairly easy to fix. Of the biggest government expenditures Social Security is quite literally the least of our problems. Extend the age to receive benefits and a few other simple tweaks to funding and it will be fine.
Stop declaring war and sending money overseas. You'd get back about $500-750bn a year instantly.
It's because there has been this perception that money on wars boosts economies. That may have been true when the countries were building production capacity and put every scrap of resources into doing so but now the production capacity exists governments take loans our to operate that capacity for political purposes.
Science and innovation is not as sexy to uninformed populations so even though it creates jobs by building industry all that science stuff is just confusing so people don't support it. It kinda sucks how once you let it go it's a downward spiral. War is more important than innovation, except when the innovation is killing.
Think about the entities who lobby your congress critters, do you think they want their business models disturbed by some disruptive technology created by *cough* scientists?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It needs to cut its budget by 50% or more. Many programs and federal departments need eliminated entirely.
The only programs that truly matter as far as the deficit is concerned are Medicare/Medicaid, Defense and Social Security. Those three together account for about two-thirds of the US budget. Get those programs under control and the problem is solved. All other discretionary spending combined accounts for less than 20% of the budget. Either we need to raise taxes to fully fund the programs we seem to want or we need to cut those programs to a level of taxation we are willing to accept. Either way will work but any argument about anything beyond Medicare and Defense (Social Security is easy to fix and self funding) is either naive or political pandering.
That's only some $650,000 per person that the government has borrowed on behalf of each and every one of you. No problem, right?
A meaningless statistic. As big as the debt is as a percent of GDP, we've had larger debts in our past that have been dealt with just fine, most notably after WWII. That doesn't mean it isn't serious but your attempt to frame the issue doesn't really address how the debt would be dealt with. Corporations pay quite a lot of tax and can be made to pay more if need be. A relatively small percentage of the population has a vast portion of the nation's wealth. Furthermore all the debt the US government has is denominated in US dollars which can be created at will (with some fairly serious negative effects).
We jumped off this cliff in 1971 in order to pay for the the Vietnam war. We've been falling ever since. It just hasn't looked like we're falling because we're all boxed up inside a Fiat currency. Now that we're nearing the bottom and bouncing off a few jagged boulders, people are starting to realize we might be screwed. I love how this "Fiscal cliff" they've invented is designed to scare everyone, even scientists, into letting them raise taxes and reduce services even more. Hilarious.
Military spending is a red herring. Yes it can be cut. But even if we completely eliminated it we'd still be on a path to bankruptcy due to the above entitlements.
No it is most definitely NOT a red herring and your argument could apply equally to Medicare or Social Security which. Each of those three programs account for around 20% of the federal budget. You could apply your exact same argument to Medicare since it accounts for close to the same amount of cash as the Defense budget. If we accept your argument, even if we eliminated Medicare completely (ignoring the obvious devastation that would cause) it wouldn't balance the budget at current taxation levels. Some combination of cuts to Defense and Medicare are inevitable unless we significantly increase taxation. (I'm less worried about SS since it can easily be fixed and still is self funding)
The problem with the sequestration deal is that it was essentially a suicide pact: if Congress can't agree to a more-balanced budget, then savage austerity measures take effect, crippling government functioning across the board.
That's great as a motivator, except that one party is motivated by an ideology that actually wants that kind of austerity. In short: it's not a very good suicide pact if one side already has a death wish.
Also, don't worry about it being a mutual self-immolation: the Republicans will demand that only social spending (and not military) gets cut, and the Democrats will cave at the last minute in the name of compromise.
> resulting in the continued existence of our only really friendly country in the middle east, and in our not having to
> get involved militarily ourselves to achieve that. Without "foreign aid", we'd either have to abandon Israel to
> annihilation by the Muslim Hordes, or come to their aid with troops.
So lets cut them loose. Honestly, Isreal has done nearly everything they reasonably could to deserve it. They build settlements in areas that are internationally recognized as Palestinian, then, in the rare occasion when they do have to leave, demolish all of the buildings, extra effort and cost, just so as to leave nothing behind for the people whose land they were trying to steal? Fuck them. Let them get pushed into the sea they are asking for it with some of the shit they have been pulling.
Honestly, we don't need them, we could normalize relations with Iran a lot more easily than I think most people realize. We have a long history of cross cultural exposure with them, they are very westernized, and only through accident of revolution and some seriously bad policy on our part that really put us in the situation we are in now.
Few things are as useful to the "towel heads" (as one of my Iranian friends so affectionately calls the clerics) as sanctions and a general adversarial posture.
Despite the rhetoric on both sides, there is no cut in federal spending coming any time soon. Even if Congress and the President do not come to an agreement (a not unlikely possibility) all that will happen is that spending will not increase by as much as projected. That is the situation at it stands is this. The law as passed last summer says that if Congress does not pass and the President sign (or Congress pass over the President's veto) some law changing things the amount that all parts of the Federal government will be allowed to spend next year will be 10% less than the amount that was projected to be spent in the last set of comprehensive "budget" documents passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. That is, they are not going to take how much Congress approved to be spent this year and reduce it by 10%. They are going to take the amount that Congress guesstimated they were going to spend next year (which includes a sizable increase from this year) and cut that by 10%.
Most people think that when they talk about cutting spending by 10% it means that if they spent $3 million this year on a program, next year they are going to spend $2.7 million. It doesn't. It means that they are going to spend $3.6 million rather than $4 million next year (numbers chosen for ease of calculation).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
BTW, the first mistake is assuming you are in the center.
We - and by this I mean everyone, including myself - need to depart from this simplistic, Ptolemaic political universe where we assume we each are at the middle, and everything swirls around us. The first point in figuring out where you're going is understanding where you are to start with.
Don't be Pauline Kael.
Try to understand that there is a broad spectrum of political opinion - even our idiom tends to betray us here as it's rarely as simple as a spectrum, although we tend to distill political issues down to (at best) a collection of 1-dimensional lines. You are somewhere on that spectrum and probably NOT in the center.
(Further, politically indecisive also is not ipso facto 'centrist'.)
This is incredibly difficult, because we naturally tend to circulate with friends of common opinion. It's very easy to say "I'm moderate" when in fact making such a statement is meaningless in any broader objective sense as it rarely means more than the implied "...among my friends."
Of course, all of this takes thought, personal candor, intellectual integrity, and hard thinking. Usually, one will find that at least a few of our gut-derived political positions turn out to be logically inconsistent and it requires courage to take those ideas apart and reassemble them. You might even change your mind.
-Styopa
You do realize that the derivatives that you are speaking up consisted of mortgage-backed securities, which were created to monetize otherwise high risk loans, right? In turn these mortgages were pushed by certain loan programs to give mortgages to people who would not otherwise receive them.
Yes, actual foreclosures caused by the mortgages were a small amount of money compared to the derivatives, but those bad mortgages not only provided the basis for some of the worst of the derivatives, but foreclosures are an extremely demoralizing event, not only for the family itself, but for the whole market. When you see foreclosures, you see people losing their homes. That affects everyone, and that is why you want to keep them low, because when everyone feels poorer, everyone IS poorer. That's how the economy works these days.
Needless to say, blaming greed is always the right answer for issues like this, but having worked for one of the companies that did provide those securities, I saw that there was also another greed working as well, a greed for more popularity and votes by making people think that you were giving them something that they otherwise would not qualify for. I saw it in pretty, glossy, nearly tabloid sized literature that had company officers and various politicians shown handing keys to people. It was a nice warm fuzzy feeling, until you realized just how they were actually profiting from loans that they otherwise wouldn't be able to collect on.
If those people in those pamphlets were renting today, having never "owned" a house I can say they would have been objectively better off now than those who got to "own" a house they couldn't pay for, and then lost it. That's why you don't decree that you have to pay loans to people who can't afford them. You're not dealing with corporate greed, you're starting to fight against the smart people who use math and research to determine who is a reasonable risk for a loan. And when you stop listening to those people, corporations start turning to the sorts of people who promise they can turn straw into gold and create things like mortgage-backed securities based on garbage.
Given that the poor people weren't the ones offering the loans how does the offering of them make it "the poor ones who did it all"?
The truth is, the poor were scammed by the rich. The banks had a win-win situation before the housing bubble burst. Talk poor Joe Sixpack who doesn't have an MBA into believing he can afford the house, and when gas prices quadruple as they did betwen 2000 and 2008 and he misses a single mortgage payment, the bank makes it nearly impossible for him to ever recover and finally forecloses, then sells the house at a tidy profit after collecting mortgage payments for a few years. And if the unthinkable happens and home prices sink, the bank has insurance to cover it. There's no possible way for the bank to lose money on a home loan under those conditions.
It was legalized theft, with the rich legally robbing the poor.
Free Martian Whores!
Whereas I read that as those offering the loans doing it, since the offering is what is being mentioned not the accepting.
“In 2007, the total volume of home sales in the United States was about $1.7 trillion—paltry when compared with the $40 trillion in stocks that are traded every year. But in contrast to the activity that was taking place on Main Street, Wall Street was making bets on housing at furious rates. In 2007, the total volume of trades in mortgage-backed securities was about $80 trillion. That meant that for every dollar that someone was willing to put in a mortgage, Wall Street was making almost $50 worth of bets on the side."
"Lehman Brothers had a leverage ratio of about 33 to 1, meaning that it had about $1 in capital for every $33 in financial positions that it held. This meant that if there was just a 3 to 4 percent decline in the value of its portfolio, Lehman Brothers would have negative equity and would potentially face bankruptcy."
Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise
Build derivatives and CDOs and trade at 50-to-1. Leverage those trades at 33-to-1. Get the rating companies to give those securities AAA ratings, despite having nothing on which to base those estimates. Then add in hedge funds and trades like Magnetar, where brokers deliberately packed tranches with toxic loans and then made money when securities deliberately setup to fail actually failed.
The housing industry was lead to slaughter not by government, but by Wall Street. It's hard to generate trillions in CDOs if you don't have enough of the loans on which those securities are based.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.