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>"Taxing the rich isn't about generating revenue to make something. It's a reallocation mechanism for dollars that already exist in the economy to things that w

by nonbel 8y ago

>"Taxing the rich isn't about generating revenue to make something. It's a reallocation mechanism for dollars that already exist in the economy to things that we want as a body of people." Ok, well here is a department of the government I am familiar with admitting they waste $25-30 billion every year (imo that is an underestimate, but they definitely waste over 50% of their funding on worthless stuff): https://nihrecord.nih.gov/newsletters/2016/07_01_2016/story3.htm https://nihrecord.nih.gov/newsletters/2016/07_01_2016/story3... So why not reallocate that to whatever this climate project is? And I'm sure there is similar massive waste in other departments too. If 87.5% is representative that is $3.5 trillion per year to be used. I mean no one actually wants to waste ~$30 billion a year on worthless medical research, right?

InitialLastName 8y ago
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. The problem with saying "Half of this research is worthless" is that it's impossible to know which of the research will be worthless before you do the research. As long as the research that was useful produced enough value to justify the system (which, in the case of the NIH I'd venture it does), it's worth doing overall. This reminds me of the Wanamaker quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half”.
- nonbel 8y ago
  >"The problem with saying "Half of this research is worthless" is that it's impossible to know which of the research will be worthless before you do the research." Once you know the common problems, it is actually quite easy to spot design flaws or a history of hiding unwanted results. When you know what to look for you can filter out crappy research in a few seconds. It could probably be automated to a large extent. For example, a common thing in biomed is to have a "headline claim" that x protein/drug/etc influences y behavior/health outcome/etc. But then there is never a scatterplot of x vs y. Another is lack of "blinding" (hiding the experimental conditions from the researcher/subjects). There are more, but you get the picture. The presence of these baffling practices quickly demonstrates they don't know what they are doing, and the research should not be funded.

by nonbel 8y ago

InitialLastName 8y ago

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. The problem with saying "Half of this research is worthless" is that it's impossible to know which of the research will be worthless before you do the research. As long as the research that was useful produced enough value to justify the system (which, in the case of the NIH I'd venture it does), it's worth doing overall. This reminds me of the Wanamaker quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half”.

nonbel 8y ago
>"The problem with saying "Half of this research is worthless" is that it's impossible to know which of the research will be worthless before you do the research." Once you know the common problems, it is actually quite easy to spot design flaws or a history of hiding unwanted results. When you know what to look for you can filter out crappy research in a few seconds. It could probably be automated to a large extent. For example, a common thing in biomed is to have a "headline claim" that x protein/drug/etc influences y behavior/health outcome/etc. But then there is never a scatterplot of x vs y. Another is lack of "blinding" (hiding the experimental conditions from the researcher/subjects). There are more, but you get the picture. The presence of these baffling practices quickly demonstrates they don't know what they are doing, and the research should not be funded.