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Particle Physicists Facing Insane Competition For Work
Jim_Austin writes "Teams of hundreds of young scientists — including many grad students and postdocs — staffed the Large Hadron Collider and helped make one of the most important scientific discoveries in recent decades. Now they must compete for just a handful of jobs. Quoting: 'The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in 54.) The two largest particle detectors fed by the LHC, the A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)—which both independently spotted the Higgs—boast teams of 3000 and 2700 physicists. By themselves, the CMS and ATLAS teams minted at least 174 Ph.D.s last year. That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900. In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of work LHC grads have trained for. The situation is equally difficult for postdocs trying to make the jump to a junior faculty position or a permanent job at a national lab. The Snowmass Young Physicists survey received responses from 956 early-career researchers, including 343 postdocs. But INSPIRE currently lists just 152 "junior" positions, including 61 in North America.'"
they are always looking for quants from what i hear
What this says is that every rich person in this country is lying through their teeth about needing immigrants. We have highly trained scientists and engineers. The percentages of people who have the right attitude and mental attributes to succeed in this line of work has remained constant for as far back as we've had standardized testing results. There has been no shift of the basic personality types from one to another; Each generation has had the same proportions as the previous.
What it means is that nobody wants to invest. And scientific progress is an investment. It doesn't give you the immediate payoff of, say, a sequel to the Fast and the Furious (what are they up to now, seven of those infernal movies?). Science isn't formulaic. There's no spreadsheet that says "And after you spend $100 million developing a drug for cancer, you'll get this as a reward. Spend $200 million, and you'll get a free t-shirt too." Science growth mirrors our own; We grow in spurts, with long periods where nothing seems to be happening, periods where change is slow, and occasional paradigm shifts.
This isn't very amiable to the current "get rich quick" culture the Boomers are espousing as they approach their retirement. They're sucking every corner of society dry looking for a quick way to monetize, any incremental way to earn a profit without much risk. And science... well, it's too risky for them. They don't care about future generations, or a cure for cancer, or putting men on the moon again. They want botox and comfortable retirements.
This is society reaching back and giving people who love science the middle finger. It's saying "We don't need you, because your contributions aren't immediate. You live in the future and we're trying to recapture our past." So unless science comes up with a cure for aging, or a time machine, it's not getting funding. And that's really all there is to this story. It's about greed, pure and simple. Nobody gives a damn about tomorrow, because for the people holding all the cash... their tomorrows are running out.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Doing what you love rarely puts bread on the table and a car in the garage. Just ask a musician.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
When the resonance cascade occurs, we'll be able to just zerg-rush the bastards with PhD-and-crowbar equipped theoretical physicists. Aliens won't stand a chance.
wall street, looking for oil
what about any math heavy job?
I was in a similar position once, but I hooked on with the US government as an engineer and did my last 15 years as a mathematician. Comfortably retired now.
With that kind of brainpower, there should be some startling developments in the next couple of decades.
It will be an interesting test of the fungibility of brainpower. You don't become some sort of high-powered physicist by being an idiot; but the process that produces physicists doesn't necessarily groom or evaluate candidates for doing not-physics, so we'll see what sort of not-physics they end up getting up to.
With that kind of brainpower, there should be some startling developments in the next couple of decades.
They still need to find a way to eat. That's the point.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This should be no surprise, since these positions are for pure scientific research with no way to calculate the ROI for the money spent. Countries have debt problems caused by borrowing and their budgets are already stretched to pay benefits for retirees and other non-workers. Add a long recession, a weak recovery, and very little prospect for robust future economic growth, and ultimately you don't end up with the sort of fiscal environment that can support lots of pure research.
Wealthy societies have discretionary funds for things like pure scientific research. Poor societies have to struggle just to get by. If you want more pure research, you need more people in your society to be employed productively. And you need them to generate lots of wealth -- far beyond "the amount they need" or "their fair share" -- so there will be a lot extra left over for things like pure research.
You don't become some sort of high-powered physicist by being an idiot
You do need to be somewhat of an idiot, at least about finances. PPs get paid very little in grad school, only a little more afterwards, and often end up in the unemployment line at the whim of legislative budget committees. The same thing happened when the SSC was cancelled in America. Is there any other career where brainpower is rewarded less?
They were unable to calculate their future job prospects. Whoops.
Put them to work on the polywell fusion reactor concept. Actually get the damn thing proven already.
When times are good, pretty much all you hear is "follow your passion!" - it doesn't help when in the business press you hear and see the "succesful" people who say that. Or the employers who demand that only people "passionate" in their work need apply!
So, folks did that: they went to school for music, art, history, literature, etc ... and maybe even found a job.
Now when times are bad (and student debt burden being in the news), folks are quick to say, "WTF didn't you study something marketable?!"
Our society is really fucked up and I have to blame corporate America - mostly. They are forcing all of us in the States into a narrower and narrower path for making a living.
Back in the old days, one was able to go to school for History or Literature come out and apply for a training program - say in Data Processing. You took an aptitude test and if you passed, they'd put you a training program (COBOL, CICS) and if you passed, you got a job - paid shit for a couple of years, but never the less a decent job. And he company NEVER - EVER - bitched about shortages of talent. They made it.
Now, you need to study EXACTLY what they need otherwise you are not qualified and not good enough - so off to India or wherever.
So, you either study something marketable - AND do well - or it's making coffee, 100% commission shit or dipshit retail.
This isn't new. It's been that way in high-energy physics since A-bombs stopped being cool. After WWII, there was a huge interest in getting into physics, and large numbers of PhD physicists were produced. The U.S. Government hired a lot of them. Nuclear weapon design became excessively fancy, much to the annoyance of today's workers who have to maintain the old bombs.
Then, after the US had produced enough bombs for the next few world wars, the nuclear establishment wound down. Los Alamos got into all sorts of strange non-nuclear stuff like chaos theory. Lawrence Livermore became a senior activity center for aging physicists. The average age of the membership in the American Physical Society went up by six months each year. That was back in the 1990s. It hasn't gotten better.
When the USSR wound down, there was a US effort to find jobs for old Soviet nuclear experts. The worry was that they'd go to work for somebody who still wanted to build a bomb or two. Some came to the US.
And what makes you think that it is different in any other profession? I'm an engineer, been unemployed, underemployed and self employed and the only complex mathematics I do is when I try to calculate 10% of a restaurant tab - Bistro Math.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The same can be said for all basic science.
Also, much of the math that is integral to today's search engines, routing, and the Internet in general was discovered many many years ago and was filed away as just an academic curiousity.
And that Historian studying Neanderthals - they've been discovering things that is answering some questions the geneticists had and subsequently helping medical research.
That lowly stupid historian is probably indirectly saving lives.
As opposed to designing some shiny electrical gadget for people to waste their money on.
Why would they emigrate to the USA? France and Switzerland have a much better quality of life. They will just stay there and sell pizza by the slice or something.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"Same as you, Arthur. I hitched a ride. After all, with a degree in maths and another in astrophysics it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday."
France is a shithole. If you've never been there you should just shut up until you learn the truth of this mythical paradise.
It is a tragedy to the same extent that it was a tragedy when Blaise Pascal wasted all those hours gambling when he could have been doing mathematics.
Young people should not go into physics expecting to become tenured professors. It might happen, but it's unlikely. And besides, why would you want to? Because your professor thinks you should aspire to it? It's actually not that great a job.
However. physics is still a great field of study because you can take it so many places. You can do engineering that engineers can't do because while they know the shortcuts while you know the fundamentals. I know a number of physicists who work in medical imaging, for example. The best RF engineer I know has a physics degree. A physicist needs great math skills, and unlike mathematicians, needs to be able to apply them in the real world. A smart physics student will take some classes outside of physics, and make mental connections between fields. If you're at a university, you should exploit the situation (and avoid being exploited).
Getting a PhD is nothing like it used to be. The whole process has become industrialised since I was young, and - while it's excellent that there *is* so much support - it doesn't represent the independent intellectual achievement that it once did.
So, while I'm very happy that there are so many people training at this level, they shouldn't think they're that great.
If you're still tipping 10%, I hope you like spitburgers.
NASA should hire all of them. We need something far far better than rockets.
The labor markets are saturated, and wealth is concentrating on the top. There just isn't a market for lots of labor anymore, manufacturing is increasingly automated, services like retail is becoming more automated (thanks Amazon!), so why not soak the rich and use the money to support more research instead of letting all that capital idle at the top?
Because that's EXACTLY what is happening now. All that capital is idling at the top, the middle/lower classes are underpaid and underemployed and not generating demand.
How about we fund a "research class" instead of a "leisure class"?
--PM
I'd be interested to see how these figures compare to other sciences. I am a mid-career biologist (did eight years as a post-doc and have had a permanent research position for the last seven years). I've always felt that we lose about half of PhD graduates to other areas, partly because they don't want and to partly because there aren't enough jobs, and then about half of post-docs don't continue in science for the same reasons. Doesn't seem that different. I do remember that, when I was a post-doc, an eminent prof (multiple Nature papers) in my field once said to me that he didn't know anyone who was 'really' determined to continue in science who didn't make it as a career. I'd say that is still true. It is a tough career that doesn't pay that well (compared to other professions with equivalent training), but a rewarding one.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
So, the short version is particle physics is exactly like every other profession in today economy?
The aim of Physics should not be to become an tenured professor, endless publishing in a very dodgy field, but doing it because its easy papers. What a waste. As much as a waste as working on wall st (telling people how to move money) or Google (getting people to click ads).
The aim of Physics is to teach the other primates to *THINK* and inspire. Some do that by building machines, some do that by tv shows some just grab people in the street and try to make them understand. Its not to get the nobel prize, or a tenured job or any shit like that.
Albert said his backup career was to teach high school science. Personally I think it should be the backup career of every physicist to teach high school physics. I think every physicist should do it like compulsory military service. Say 3 years during the early part of your career. As a professor, most uni's have teaching loads so learn how to teach damit.
Physics is dying. Less than 10% of the people teaching physics have any 3rd year physics units. Even less are Physics graduated. Its taught by PE teachers, librarians or anyone who there is currently excess supply of. People think that physics isn't important, or real or something they should know about.
We should be pumping physicists out into our societies. They are adaptable. Tesla was a labourer, Fermi could fix cars, Newton ran the mint and made one hell of an investigator. Everywhere physicists go they revolutionise or advance other fields. Because those fields are so childishly simplistic and usually not based on logic or reason. Physicists make great managers. Look at the LHC or the Manhattan project, can you imagine a team of 10,000 history/management/business/accounting professors managing and working together? Do you think they would get together and make something that changes the world socially, politically, economically? Its in our nature to collaborate, to link up to cross over into other fields. Physicists win prizes outside their field (chem, bio, economics) like its nothing.
Damit, the problem is no one is seeing the real problem, which is pumping physicists into the general population. I have a team of ~10 physicists (degree level) working under me. Its great. They are prolific about their work, they work hard, they collaborate, they rarely make mistakes, they pioneer or develop new technologies into the workplace and share everything they know with anyone who is interested. All highly capable mathematicians, communicators and problem solvers, particularly outside of their field.
If we're going to open our doors to foreign technology workers, it shouldn't be because some technology or pharma executive wrote an editorial in the WSJ.
Well, said... As someone moving to SF on an H1B next month, I'm usually pro the H1B program :) :)
:)
But I do want to point out that not everybody abuses the H1B program.
I'm not relocation from a third world country, or to work at a third world salary, in fact could get similar wage here... actually I could just do job remotely.
Or get a well paying job at a company here... but the job wouldn't be as fun
I think mobility is important for many reasons, in my considerations are things such as SF having a lot of tech companies, startups and etc...
I don't know if I'll apply for a permanent visa at some point, but if I move back the contacts I'll be making will be invaluable, on both ends.
At the end of the day, if you don't let tech workers from around the world in, tech workers from around the globe will cluster in another valley.
Note. with all the NSA scandals, lack of welfare, poor security, crime, human rights violations, war crimes, etc. that the US has got going, I'm starting to wonder why I'm relocation.
On the other hand, I did all the paper pushing... So I might as well try it out
Anyways, feel free to tell me why the US is so awesome, I kinda need it...
I was there when the SSC was cancel, ready to move to Dallas and then found I didn't have a job start date (cause it was canceled).
Luckily for that time, The Internet showed up and 15yrs later from that detour I'm trying to get back into pure Physics.
For the younglings of today trying to excerise the power of the Force (literally, f=ma, mind that), I'm not sure what they'll drop into if they don't get a position at places like LHC since headcount is very tight and current senior positions are occupied in young PhDs with another 20yrs going for them. Social Media and Wall Street are dying out, but there maybe some hope with "Big Data".
Twenty years ago it was pretty clear that very few physics graduates would have a career in the field so little has changed in this regard.
You study it because it is fascinating stuff, not necessarily because you'd expect to make a living of it. Other work is financially much more rewarding, and it is fairly easy to branch out with a physics degree under your belt.
Instead of spending billions on Wall Street, the government should be supporting the sciences, by providing patronage for things like physics Phds and the like.
Much higher return methinks.
“Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it. ” Richard P. Feynman
The rest of society benefits when government and society puts money into the sciences instead of financial hustles.
I graduated in '91 studying molecular beams. There was so little work in the field then, that I went into peptide chemistry. Nothing has changed, and I doubt anything will in the future. More people want to study high energy physics than can be supported in the field. Nothing new. Nothing to see here, move along......
That we have: rich owners of robotized factories. The benefits of this robotization should fall on all the members of society, not only the few that possess the factories.
What the hell did you ever do to think that you deserve any of the "benefits"? You priced your labor (through the unions) to an unsustainable level; you threatened profitability with work slowdowns and strikes; you supported the lazy assholes who did just enough to get by and never tried to push for more productivity - any wonder that management went to the expense (and it is LARGE) and trouble of implementing "robotized factories"? And for doing nothing (and worse) you now feel that you should be entitled to the benefits?
You do and have done nothing to increase value for the shareholders (you know, the people that own the company) , but you want more - typical union mentality.
Just remember: if it is poorly made of inferior materials. outrageously overpriced, and fails to fulfill its designed function - it's union made in America!
Most retirees worked for their benefits. They may be non-workers now, but while they worked they paid taxes into a retirement system and often accumulated their own capital in addition.
The fact that the government frittered away their contribution is not their fault.
The capital they accumulated should be and even sometimes is an important source of accumulated wealth that is invested into the economy. When it isn't, it's another government screw-up.
I don't see why I should cry for these guys any more than I should cry for the millions of athletically gifted sacks who discover that they won't be playing professional sports for a living. The worldwide number of professional athletes and professional particle physicists seem comparable and the physicists don't have the jocks' excuse of being bad at math.
Labor costs could be reduced without any wage or salary changes by cutting the costs of liability and regulatory compliance. Beyond that, various taxes could also be cut. Profitability could be increased through similar changes -- especially by cutting the US corporate tax rates from the world's highest to a rate more in line with international norms. If we want (the benefits of) a wealthier society, we should think about these and other ways our society can be wealthier.
Umm not. Labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation and liability. Nor are they affected by taxation. It is only corporate profitability that is affected. Which is already at an all time high. Corporations don't need to be more profitable to hire people. Corporate cash accounts are at all time highs.
The reason we have a labor glut? Demand is down and worker productivity is extremely high. So we have record low labor force participation. Unemployed people consume lots less than employed people.
Do you know who else consumes relatively little (as a proportion of their income)? Very rich people.
What do we have in the US right now? A real crappy distribution of income. A shrinking and lower income middle class. Until the consumer class starts growing again demand will stay low and along with it labor force participation.
This should be no surprise, since these positions are for pure scientific research with no way to calculate the ROI for the money spent. Countries have debt problems caused by borrowing and their budgets are already stretched to pay benefits for retirees and other non-workers. Add a long recession, a weak recovery, and very little prospect for robust future economic growth, and ultimately you don't end up with the sort of fiscal environment that can support lots of pure research.
Wealthy societies have discretionary funds for things like pure scientific research. Poor societies have to struggle just to get by. If you want more pure research, you need more people in your society to be employed productively. And you need them to generate lots of wealth -- far beyond "the amount they need" or "their fair share" -- so there will be a lot extra left over for things like pure research.
When you're doing basic research, you must figure on the ROI of your research being possibly zero. There's always a chance that what you're doing will pay off for society at some point in a big way, but the fact is most basic research doesn't. Most of it is exploring blind alleys and some of it has negative impacts so devastating that they may offset the value of a great deal of research. So yes, it's the province of wealthy countries who can afford to spend a good deal of effort on something that may not ever pay off.
High energy particle physics in particlar has no foreseeable prospect of ever paying off from this point forward.
I'm kind of at a loss - there is nothing new here. HEP has always been a case of large numbers of grad students and post docs working on the cheap at the accelerator labs. There might be a bit of surplus from a rush in the years leading up to the LHC startup after a lull while it was built - and certainly the more complex detectors require more staff. And the Tevatron is now closed, though that was wound down over a number of years. But I think if one could get the figures, the employment in HEP at both the labs and at universities (often times at both) has been more or less constant since the early 1980s. And many of the grad students only work in the HEP field for a small time, leaving for related disciplines or someting at a tangent, like Wall St.
Finally, any one at entry level in HEP with the thought of making it their eventual career who has not considered at least one or two alternatives to fall back upon really has done themself a great diservice and clearly has not really looked at the history of supply/demand in the field. Sorry, I just can't drum up sympathy for this group.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
http://disciplinedminds.com/
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/182889/
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/04/05/1522215/getting-a-literature-phd-will-make-you-into-a-horrible-person
http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/bioforum/1997-December/025426.html
http://100rsns.blogspot.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I wish I knew where all of these out of work physicists are. I need one to design a klystron or gyrotron for me.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
My post wasn't about whose fault anything is. Saying "it's not my fault" doesn't make problems go away, nor does it make money appear. We have problems. Retirees are part of "we". Retirees should try to help solve the problems we have.
To bring the discussion back on topic: retirees should try to help make their society wealthier if they want their society to be able to fund pure research. Retirees might want to try producing more or using up less.
If you don't think labor costs are affected by taxation, you've never seen a paycheck.
Besides that, you have a lot of complaints. Do you have any ideas?
.. is that they can end up being successful, at which point they end.
In the decades leading up to the Napoleonic wars, Great Brittian had a continously growing navy, They built ships at a crazy rate, and were very successful capturing enemy ships and re-flagging them as Brittish war ships. They took in huge numbers of young educated gentlemen as midshipmen, (at age 12 or so) who later became lieutenants, and the leading edge of that Ponzi scheme made it to Commander and Captain. Once made captain, they were tenured and moved up to flag-rank on a purely seniority basis.
This was a great career as long as Napolean was around as a threat. But the day he was defeated, the whole Navy career Ponzi scheme came crashing down. The fleet shrank, so there were no posts. Admirals, competent or not, sane or not, hung onto their posts like grimm death. It about killed the navy. Many a bright lieutenant never saw blue water again, at least in a King's ship.
So, anyway, we've seen this movie before. Too many Captains, not enough ships, is the same problem as too many PhD's, not enough gigantanic, multi-national particle accelerators.
You do need to be somewhat of an idiot, at least about finances
You confuse intelligence and greed.
Wait, so you're saying that if I go into the rarified field of theoretical particle physics, it's going to be hard to find a job? Crazy! I'm going to change my degree to Historical Russian Literature, that's much more market-attractive in an everyday sense.
-Styopa
Simple fact:
Every tenured professor is expected to train N new PhD's over the course of his career, with N >> 1.
Exponential growth, meet finite resources.
No hints of physics beyond the standard model? Well, you should move to Japan and specialise in neutrino physics then. There's loads of weird shit beyond the standard model that the Super K managed to find. The fact that neutrinos have even been shown to have mass at all is a pretty damn big hint at physics beyond the Standard Model.
Oh come on. Labor costs have nothing to do with the taxes you see on a paycheck. Those are the taxes that the employee pays, not the employer.
As far as ideas, sure, here's a few.
How about fixing the minimum wage? The value of the minimum wage has not at all kept up with inflation. In countries like Australia it's at $15. Accounting for inflation the US min wage is half what it was when first introduced.
A really stupid American idea is tying health care to employment. It should be a single payer system. The US cost per cap cost for health care is essentially twice that of any other nation because of the wasteful processes we have. Get rid of that cost and there will be far greater funds available for good old consumption.
Another idea is to cut back on defense spending and use the money for infrastructure. Defense buys expensive toys that do little for employment or the economy while infrastructure would do a lot.
Another is to cut the BS with education. We have large swaths of the population basically uneducated. If you want to cut regulations THAT'S the place.
Congress seriously needs reform. They cater to much to entrenched interests. Term limits would be a huge step forward.
I like how you said "labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation" and then, in your very next post, you mention the minimum wage and health care, both of which are highly regulated and impose costs on employers for each employee hired.
Oh come on. Labor costs have nothing to do with the taxes you see on a paycheck. Those are the taxes that the employee pays, not the employer.
In addition to all the taxes deducted from the gross pay on a paycheck, employers in the US pay 6.2% FICA tax, 1.45% Medicare tax, FUTA tax, ACA tax for each employee with a health plan, ACA fines for each employee without a health plan, worker's comp, unemployment tax, and other local and state taxes like the Employment Training Tax in California. Employers also have lots of expensive rules to follow. Cutting some of these taxes and eliminating some of these rules would make it less costly (and therefore more profitable) to hire someone, with no change in the employee's gross or net pay. If we want more people hired, we might want to seriously think about it.
Lots of the rest of your post is good.
I'm not sure why you want to deny everyone who can't (or doesn't want to) do $15 worth of work in a hour the opportunity to earn a paycheck though. You might want to consider that some more. Every high school student n the country shouldn't be deprived of a job just because one person has a sob story about "How am I supposed to support my 3 kids on $8.75/hour?"
You do need to be somewhat of an idiot, at least about finances. PPs get paid very little in grad school, only a little more afterwards,
They know (or should know) that. Not everyone makes their career decisions about chasing as many almighty bucks as possible.
Some people have passions, aspirations, and things they can excel at that are more valuable to society and perhaps more fulfilling for them.
I'm sure some will switch fields to not particle physics. Others will find a position or a job they can adapt to; that might be physics related, or maybe, they will be entrepreneurs....
This is hardly news. It has been going on for at least 20 years now, in all fields of science, at least where I live.
Up until the 70s, early 80s, universities had ample funding and a growing number of students, and could uptake quite a few of their grads to fulfill the needed associate professorships. Now, funding is down, the student population is more or less stabilized, and university councils prefer to have one or two professors managing and planning, while PhDs and postdocs teach and do the bulk of the research. When a PhD or a postdoc fails to apply for Yet Another Grant, (s)he has to go. When a postdoc gets enough grants, projects, etc., (s)he might get onto a tenure track. It also helps when the postdoc's supervising professor has a certain status.
Universities are like Napoleon: they don't want any general, they want the lucky ones.
I have started my career as an immigrant in France, and I should stay that the country is great. The only problem is that a small subset of French are racist. I have lived in Toulouse (great area with great people) and in the French Riviera (beautiful area, sea, mountain not too far, but people not that cool (not all) and too much tourists/traffic/... during summer) I'm not in France anymore but if have the opportunity to get back there for an interesting job, I would consider it. (and my job there was better than my current job, if you consider the technical part of the job. But less paid)
Instead of spending trillions on pointless wars how about we divert some of that vast waste to employing these people to come up with improvements to society such as getting a working fusion reactor. I can't believe that the deaths of millions and the immense cost is never on the radar but scientists doing work that is unprofitable now catches hell from the commentators for "waste of taxpayer dollars/euros/pounds".
There is an idea that popularising particle physics and astronomy encourages young people to be interested in careers in science. What it actually does is encourage young people to be interested in careers in particle physics and astronomy. The result is a glut of specialists in those particular areas while other disciplines are starved of good people. Those offering posts in other areas of physics find it hard to get good candidates in their field and sometimes have to hire and re-train specialists from these popular areas (if they are prepared to take the job in the first place).
We're talking about multiple decades of relatively unproductive but highly expensive research. These folks did string theory for an entire human generation and it came to nothing. Jeez. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Just because its not profitable and you can't find answers you expect when you want, it doesn't mean its a waste of time to the people most qualified to make that determination. It just means that human enterprise is currently driven by a system of values that affords us our current results. Perhaps that is why we have a world with 7 billion human beings and 1 billion jobs. It a crying shame that 6 billion qualified contributing members of humanity must just "move along" just because there is no money available to keep them working at Walmat. Since when did money become the prerequisite value of human existence and purpose? What a sad state of human accomplishment, after all. Bacteria seem wiser.
I think your parent is spot-on.
These students did not study particle physics because of the pay, just as I did not study embedded processors, thermodynamics, energy transfer, and power electronics for the pay.
I just expected to be able to earn a living.
This was something I enjoy doing. Everybody seems to have something different they were wired to do - and its been in them since birth. I enjoy doing what I do - matter of fact its the only thing I really get a kick out of. Sports bores me to tears. I have terrible social skills. But by golly I can build one hell of a refrigeration system.
Why in all blue blazes could anybody get a kick out of this? You might as well get an equally lame answer out of me if you ask me why I think anyone can get a kick out of watching grown men trying to hit a ball with a stick and run - as if it makes any difference in my world. But to me seeing us waste energy the way we do, and knowing there is only so much easily accessible energy locked up in the ancient sunlight stored by our coal and petroleum resources - now that's what gets my interest up.
And yes, I - like the particle physicist - am unemployed - doing low level stuff to keep the bills paid. Yes, I will do what I have to do to survive in a world based on money instead of long term planning, but my heart just is not in anything else....and it shows.
I moderated in this forum, so I will have to remain AC.
For what its worth, if the Bible offers any insight into our crazy ways, it indicates God had already wired us the way we were to be before we were conceived in our mama's womb. Whether or not you take that is up to you. Just look for yourself - people will do what they were borned to do ( apologies to Huck Finn )...Talk to gays - did they choose their wiring? If you ask me, a lot have taken hell for it. I get the idea we have about as much choosing our wiring as a leopard has in putting his spots where someone else wants them. We get the hand we are dealt, and try to make the best of it.
anubi...
Labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation and liability. Nor are they affected by taxation.
US workers are roughly 7% more expensive to employers because of Social Security taxes that the employers pay directly to Uncle Sam. As to the other usual income taxes, if those went down, the benefit would be shared between employer and employee because employment is a competitive market.
Labor costs are not particularly affected by regulation and liability.
Except that those things cost a lot especially for a small business. Even when regulation doesn't apply directly to labor, it can still cost money and hence, steal funds that a business could have used to employ people instead.
And there are a bunch of developed world government policies that deliberately constrict labor force participation. For example, in the US, we have subsidized student loans (encouraging people to go to school rather than get a job), prison (highest incarceration rates in the developed world), indefinite unemployment insurance payouts, disability, and Social Security payments (encouraging people to retire at a fixed age).
That results in lower supply of labor and higher costs for who does get hired. It also means yet another considerable incentive for US businesses to find ways to avoid employing people.
And all along you've been ignoring the elephant in the room, cheap global labor. Even with the relative decline in real wages of the developed world versus the developing world, it remains that a lot of jobs don't make sense to do in the developed world. If your labor is the sole source of your wealth and its value declines because there's so much more of it, then you will see a decline in your wealth.
Lots of people are employed. They just aren't getting employed in the developed world.
Unemployed people consume lots less than employed people.
[...]
Until the consumer class starts growing again demand will stay low and along with it labor force participation.
Wealth is not consumption. Short term economic activity need not lead to long term economic growth. We don't need a "consumer class", much less a growing one.
How about fixing the minimum wage? The value of the minimum wage has not at all kept up with inflation. In countries like Australia it's at $15. Accounting for inflation the US min wage is half what it was when first introduced.
So we "fix" labor issues by making it even more expensive to employ people? The problem with your proposal is that it fixes minimum wage in the wrong direction. Low labor force participation means we need to lower minimum wage not raise it.
I just expected to be able to earn a living.
Hence, the quoted comment "You do need to be somewhat of an idiot, at least about finances." Expectation need not be met in the real world. And if that expectation of earning a living for something that no one is paying for is "greed" (as another poster apparently has alleged), then so be it.
And yes, I - like the particle physicist - am unemployed - doing low level stuff to keep the bills paid. Yes, I will do what I have to do to survive in a world based on money instead of long term planning, but my heart just is not in anything else....and it shows.
Well, I have to say that I'm in the same boat, though with a job I like doing and the ability to put away some funds (there is some room for long term planning in there).
I picked up a PhD in math, but I did so with the understanding that I probably wouldn't need (I consider it useful not necessary) it for anything I did for the rest of my life. When I saw people who were clearly better than me, smarter, harder working, more productive, etc having a great deal of trouble getting traditional math jobs (generally those jobs get two orders of magnitude more applications than there are positions, people applying generally apply to several dozen to several hundred positions, but there are more people than positions), I decided I just wasn't going to go that route and waste all that time.
How many of those new PhDs become tenured professors? It's not exponential growth at all.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Rarely have I had service that deserved more.
No surprise there; Think about it. I prefer to bribe the help memorably. If I get poor service I leave about 10%, otherwise, I round up from 25%.
My special recommendation is memorable denominations. I believe that I am spoken of in my absence, as usually the very next time I show up I start getting the preferred customer treatment. When I go to my bank, I always get a roll of dollar coins, and a handful of $2 bills. I pay for my item with a two, or a couple coins, that way they can figure who dropped the generous tip in the jar. Some times the cashier will pull the $2 bills out of the register to buy with their own money, as they remain strangely uncommon.
OTOH, I probably get a bit more respect due to my not treating the help as servants, but more like a friend who is a gracious host.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
"The World needs ditch diggers too"
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I've noted that here in Canada. In fact the engineers have managed to set up their own medieval guild structure so that, by law, you cannot have a physicist do certain jobs which they are more qualified to do than engineers e.g. teach physics! At one point they were even trying to get laws passed so that only engineers could work in any team designing ANY electronic circuit - fortunately that failed.
However if you get away from the pure engineering jobs and start to look at R&D or even in finance and you'll see lots of physicists. The data mining you do for particle physics coupled with the logical investigative/inference skills and a good understanding of large computer systems is extremely useful for mining financial data and making predictions. I know many colleagues who have left particle physics for the finance sector. Likewise R&D often requires that you know how things work which is where physicists often have the edge on engineers - although you'll undoubtedly be work with engineers to build things. This is a very similar model to physics research and again I've seen many colleagues take this route too. While the job crunch in particle physics is very severe at the moment if you look at the overall employment rate of physicists it is extremely high partly because a physics degree is so flexible.
First, take all the unemployed grads and divide them into two teams. Then, rent an Olympic track. Start the two teams running in opposite directions around the track, with one team taking the inside lanes and one team taking the outside ones. Half way through the race, you make them change from outside to inside and vice versa right at the start/finish line.
The results should produce interesting, previously-unknown kinds of employees, perhaps with unusual or exotic skills.
Just a thought...
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Still think it was a good idea for Congress to cancel the Superconducting Supercollider?
Such a low wage would be unacceptable unless you supplement it with welfare, $1000 per month no string attached would be about decent if you want people to live in a society with no minimum wage, fire at will etc. ; don't forget the Medicare equivalent, too.
Such a low wage would be unacceptable unless you supplement it with welfare
While I'm willing to accept some degree of welfare, it's worth noting that what is unacceptable now will probably become acceptable in the next few decades unless something is done to reverse this ongoing decline.
Your $1000 per month welfare supplement, no strings attached over 310 million people (the population of the US) is roughly 3.8 trillion dollars of welfare a year - more than the US currently spends on everything including mandatory spending.
Who is paying for that? Even if we throw away everything else, we still need to come up with about 1.3-1.4 trillion US to make up that shortfall (on 2012 tax revenue of roughly 2.45 trillion). That's more than a 50% increase over current federal taxes, including every way they gather income. That's also almost a quarter of GDP. I don't think it's remotely sustainable.
And now you've redirected even more revenue away from the people who employ other people and given it to people who don't do those things.
Well, I'm not asking dishonest loaded questions. That's good enough for me.
Is there any other career where brainpower is rewarded less?
Literary criticism?
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.