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>As research budgets shrink, and fewer people go into oceanographic research, it’s hard to say what is on the horizon for FLIP. Why is it that budgets everywhe
by gerbilly 9y ago
>As research budgets shrink, and fewer people go into oceanographic research, it’s hard to say what is on the horizon for FLIP.
Why is it that budgets everywhere from businesses public/private to government to scientific research are always shrinking?
It's like it's the invariant of our age: well you know, budgets are shrinking...
- monsieurbanana 9y agoMaybe growing budgets don't make the headlines, or newly created budgets don't enter in the "growing" category.
- KekDemaga 9y agoI learned recently that often when it is said that "budgets are shrinking" it actually means the purposed year over year increase has been cut and in terms of total dollars it continues to increase or stay the same. Not sure if this is the case here but something to look out for.
- RugnirViking 9y agoBut due to inflation if it didn't increase the budget would have less value. At least this is the understanding I have usually been given.
- bluGill 9y agoA budget can still be "cut" while growing against inflation though. They also refer to a cut compared to projections, and the projections are usually to increase the budget faster than inflation.
- RugnirViking 9y agoWhile I am sure that dishonest reporting does go on in some cases, a possible explanation for that phenomenon is that many services have to scale the budget not only by inflation but also by population. For example, the health service might have a fixed cost per person and so their overall budget growth could be inflation+population growth
- jonathantm 9y agoBut we say wages are "stagnant" when really "wages continue to shrink" would be more accurate.
- RugnirViking 9y agoMostly because when inflation ajusted they are in fact stagnant[1] That is to say, all of the profits from technology and automation in the last 40 years or so have gone to the owners of capital. How you interpret this or propose to 'solve' I won't comment on. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wages
- logfromblammo 9y agoIt's closer to 50 years than 40--since about 1970. I'd say it's the capital-owners' problem to solve, since everyone else can still afford to buy/build weapons. They may sometimes forget that the veneer of civilization is paper thin, when their veneer has gold leaf on top of it.
- nashashmi 9y agoBecause budgets elsewhere are expanding. Interest in science has waned and research in tech has increased. My own field of civil engineering has seen much better days in terms of research and innovation. The field is now seen as ancient and specs are top heavy. Well, the brighter minds have turned to other areas and our field has flatlined.
- panic 9y agoIt's not necessarily about interest. US policy for the past few decades has been to reduce taxes (in 1945 we took 94% from the highest income tax bracket!) and let the private sector decide how to allocate money. Since people spend a lot of money on tech, that's where the money ends up.
- mseebach 9y agoRegardless of tax policy having been reformed several times, tax revenue relative to GDP has steadily increased. The problem is that the money is spent on other things, not that it's not being collected. http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/revenue_history http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/revenue_history
- panic 9y agoThe increase is due to social security revenue, which goes into a trust fund and can't be invested directly into research. If you leave out social security, the graphs on that site show the remaining federal revenue steadily decreasing relative to GDP.
- ryanmarsh 9y agoI've heard about shrinking budgets for so long if the statements were true I'd expect all the budgets to be $0 by now.
- Retric 9y agoThe slope is down just not steep. https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/RDGDP;.jpg https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/RDGDP;.jpg Basically, we are down ~45% relative to GDP since 1980 but there are years with minor increases.
- strictnein 9y agoBut that's just for Federal R&D spending. Worldbank and the OECD paint a much less bleak picture: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locations=US&name_desc=true http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locati... https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm These data sets include all forms of R&D spending, not just federally funded ones: "Gross domestic spending on R&D is defined as the total expenditure (current and capital) on R&D carried out by all resident companies, research institutes, university and government laboratories, etc., in a country"
- Retric 9y agoR&D is misleading in this context. McDonalds's does R&D when it's designing it's new menu, but that's does not result in long term economic gain like say transistor research does. Generally, what matters is fundamental research not development as building ever better vacuum tubes ended up being mostly pointless.
- strictnein 9y agoEither we count R&D or we don't. There are mountains of articles written on wasteful government R&D.
- tpeo 9y ago
- THE_PUN_STOPS 9y agoEntropy? Inflation?