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> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing th

by jack_h 1y ago

> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the second largest outlay behind social security was the interest payment at a trillion dollars. This is a trillion dollars that cannot be used to provide government services. Over the next 30 years the primary driver of debt will be medicare and interest payments, the former due to demographic shifts and the US being pretty unhealthy overall. Our deficit is (last I checked) projected to be 7.3% of GDP this year. That means that if congress voted to defund the entire military and the entire federal government (park services, FBI, law clerks, congressional salaries, everything) we would still have to borrow. Those two things combined are only ~25% of federal outlays. I also reject the idea that this government-university partnership is somehow perfect. Over time bureaucracy tends to increase which increases overhead. This happens in private industry, government, universities, everywhere. However, there is no failure mechanism when it comes to government-university partnerships. At least in the free market inefficient companies will eventually go defunct which frees those resources for more economically useful output. Universities will continue to become more bureaucratic so long as the government keeps sending them more money. All of these economic effects must be viewed over very long periods of time. It's not enough to setup a system, see that it produced positive results, and assume it will continue to do so 80 years later. Really this reads like a pleas from special interest groups who receive federal funding. Every special interest group will be doing this. That's the issue though. A lot of special interest groups who have a financial incentive to keep the money flowing despite the looming consequences to the USD.

Retric 1y ago
US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. This is unlike say corn subsidies which not only reduce economic efficiency but also have direct negative heath impacts furthering the harm. Medicare spending is problematic because it’s consumptive, but there’s ways to minimize the expense without massively reducing care. The VA for example dramatically reduces their costs by operating independent medical facilities. That’s unlikely to fly, but assuming nothing changes is equally unlikely.
- jack_h 1y ago
  Even if those attribution studies are 100% correct that doesn’t mean this system optimally allocates resources. The ultimate issue with our social programs is due to demographics. An aging population whose replacement rate is projected to go negative (more deaths than births) within the next few years is catastrophic for the way we fund those programs. We absolutely should try and reduce their operating costs though; I agree with that.
  - Retric 1y ago
    Noting people do is 100% optimal, but productivity gains mean resource constraint problems are more solvable than they first appear. People are worried about automation driving people out of the workplace while others are worried about a lack of workers due to changing demographics. What’s going to happen is the result of a bunch of different forces, simplified projections are easy to make and unlikely to prove accurate.
    - generativenoise 1y ago
      It is insane that people think we need a growing population to make this perfect population pyramid, to make things work easily in monetary terms with taxes. It really does ignore so many of the other forces as you mention. The picture looks radically different if you focus on real resources and allocation. In fact a growing population could make things very economically tenuous in real terms, depending on how a few key environmental factors play out over the coming centuries.
  - monknomo 1y ago
    I mean, a relatively easy fix to a negative replacement rate (at least when you have a well-run, wealthy, attractive country) is immigration. Replacement rate isn't a problem when you let more folks in
    - consumer451 1y ago
      I agree, but this only works if one is willing to accept a changing racial profile/culture. It appears that many people do not accept this idea. Not just in the USA, but look at Japan or South Korea, for example. To me, the really interesting question is how to stop what appears to have been inevitable for the last 40+ years: when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates drop to tragic levels. I believe what could help here involves all kinds of non-market solutions which are hard to solve, and very not cool at the moment. The reason that I find this important is that even though I personally have no problem with race/culture mixing, in-fact I love Korean BBQ tacos... eventually with the immigration solution, there is an end state where all societies and countries are economically advanced, and have negative birth rates. What then? As a Star Trek fan, I have ideas about post-scarcity.
9283409232 1y ago
The problem with US debt comes from their unwillingness to tax billionaires. We just passed even more tax cuts for rich people and are scheduled to add more to the debt. Just tax rich people, it's not complicated.
- jack_h 1y ago
  The economic projections I’ve seen have shown taxing the rich will increase tax revenue by around 1.5% of GDP. We’re slated to borrow 7.3%. That math doesn’t work. To be fair, the republican math with cuts (assuming no tax cuts) also doesn’t work. Neither side is serious about this issue.
  - 9283409232 1y ago
    Taxing billionaires is just one of many necessary steps but it is the most important and vital step in my opinion. There are fundamental problems with how the US is run down to the local level but it starts with taxing billionaires and getting money out of politics.
    - jack_h 1y ago
      To be clear, I think raising taxes on everyone is going to have to happen along with spending cuts.
      - 9283409232 1y ago
        What does the ideal solution look like to you? Are you happy with what DOGE is doing and if not what would you change? I'm asking genuinely because I don't think enough people put forth ideas in their own right.
    - jay_kyburz 1y ago
      Why point at billionaires, anyone with more than a million is living a comfortable life, everybody should be doing their part.
netsharc 1y ago
> The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Really...? Until Liberation Day the other week, I would doubt this. The whole world holds the US dollar, if the USA fails (side-glare at Donald and Elon), the whole world goes into chaos. If President Harris had said "OK world, we need to borrow x more dollars to keep this country running", people (private creditors and nations) would say "I'm pretty sure the USA will still be a solid economy in 10 (or 30 years), x% ROI if I lend them money? Sure!". And as this chart says, it's not all owned by "Chaina": https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-debt/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-...
- jack_h 1y ago
  This has nothing to do with Trump beyond the fact that his plans could hasten how quickly this blows up. Bond rates were already going up before the election, the bond market was already nervous. Your indication that the world isn’t starting to have doubts isn’t born out by the bond market rates. > And as this chart says, it's not all owned by "Chaina" I never said that. China has been rolling US debt off of their books for a decade now and moving towards BRICS. If we make this a partisan issue, which you appear to be, we won’t solve this problem. That would be a catastrophic mistake.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Bond rates were already going up before the election Treasuries behaving like a risk asset is 100% Trump. And it has nothing to do with him blowing out our deficit, it's 100% about stagflation and money markets.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    Are you saying that hastening the catastrophe is the right move?
    - jack_h 1y ago
      No.
regularization 1y ago
The way they math is presented is off. The US is deficit spending this year, yet you present the interest payment as something separate from the military. Obviously that interest is partially from the military spending the US makes this year that it has not paid for, military payments from last year it has not paid for etc. The billions sent to Israel, the Ukraine and the hundreds of military bases the US has spanning the globe are not cheap. Also, a lot of other military expenses are not counted as military expenditures in your math. A veteran whose leg was blown off overseas going to a VA hospital is not a military expenditure in this math. If you have an extremely narrow definition of military spending, you can make it look small, but if you count veteran's benefits, interest on past military adventures etc. It looks larger. Why are Navy ships being shot at off Yemen, to cover for what the UN committee investigating it found is an ongoing genocide in Gaza. Which is also helping bankruptcy the US, as you pointed out
- jack_h 1y ago
  I have no idea what you’re talking about honestly. The data for government spending can be seen in multiple places, here is the CBO numbers (this might be an older article or out of date, I don’t have time or access to a laptop right now). https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61172 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61172
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    What the GP is talking about is that there are differing opinions on what counts as "military spending" or "defense spending". The CBO has its definition, but that is not universally accepted, particularly by people who think that the USA spends far too much on its military. The question of whether or not e.g. veteran's health care should be considered part of military spending is not a stupid one, even if people may differ on their answers.
    - jack_h 1y ago
      I suppose that’s fair, but kind of tangential. The point I was making was that if discretionary spending, approximately 25% of outlays, could be completely cut we would still have a deficit. I’m not suggesting this is even possible, I’m merely using it as a demonstration of the scale of the problem.
mindslight 1y ago
Where does government subsidized loans to banks (eg Fed, Fannie, Freddie) sit in your list? The government is a monetary sovereign - it cannot run out of dollars to use. The actual constraint is that creating too much new money creates too much price inflation. But for the past decades most monetary inflation has been flowing into the financial sector and bidding up the asset bubbles, with the "fiscal responsibility" political narrative merely being a dishonest cover to keep that gravy train flowing.
contemporary343 1y ago
Actually overheads for many universities were sometimes higher in the late 1990s (and there were some minor scandals associated with this). And remind me again, what fraction of our GDP is indirect costs to universities? (< 0.1%). And what are the benefits? Well, indirect costs are how the U.S. government builds up a distributed network of scientific and technical infrastructure and capacity. This capacity serves the national interest. If you think you're going to help debt by cutting indirect costs and crippling university research permanently, may I introduce you to the foundational notions of a knowledge economy and how fundamental advances feed into technology developments that increase productivity and thus GDP. Permanently reducing growth is another way of making debt servicing worse.
TYPE_FASTER 1y ago
Federally funded R&D was around 3.4% of the GDP in 2021: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23339 https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23339.
- tvier 1y ago
  The chart in that link seems to indicate it was 0.6%, while total R&D funding was 3.4%
tw04 1y ago
I guess what is your point though? The current administration has absolutely no plans to reduce debt as a part of these funding cuts. They plan on INCREASING debt by issuing massive tax breaks that no amount of cutting will fund. It’s right there in their own budget. If anything they’re taking the worst of all worlds by sacrificing future revenue (by way of new technology that can be sold) to give money to people who don’t need it right now. If you think the US is going to remain the center of the western world’s economic universe, or that any of our allies are going to remain on a dollar standard when we can’t be relied upon militarily or otherwise, I think you’re in for a very rude awakening.
apical_dendrite 1y ago
How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war and there were coal shortages. Britain was at a point where without massive aid from the US huge numbers of people would die of cold or starvation. The US has huge surpluses of food and energy. The idea that we're in such a crisis that we have to eat our own seed corn (massive cuts to science research which is one of the main drivers of US economic growth) is crazy.
- philwelch 1y ago
  > How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war and there were coal shortages. Up until you got to the rationing and coal shortages I think the parallels with the contemporary US are pretty obvious.
  - apical_dendrite 1y ago
    No, not really. The fact that we import so much is a function of our wealth, not our poverty. We import food because we like to have a variety of produce year round and we like alcohol from foreign countries and we can afford it. Britain was importing food because otherwise there would be famine. These are not equivalent situations.
    - philwelch 1y ago
      It's true that the United States does not depend on food and energy imports. However, the growing fiscal situation and unsustainable costs of maintaining global hegemony are very similar to that of Britain in the 20th century, as is the declining competitiveness of American industry. You're never going to find any exact or perfect historical parallels but there are enough similarities to cause concern.
grafmax 1y ago
The idea that the free market will self-correct and optimize outcomes is a well-documented fantasy. Markets don’t account for externalities, they concentrate wealth (and therefore political power), and they routinely underprovide merit goods like education, healthcare, and basic research (things that benefit society broadly but aren’t immediately profitable). As for how to address budget issues, the solution is simple: tax the rich.
- BobbyJo 1y ago
  Im afraid you'd need to be pretty liberal with your definition of rich at this point to dig us out of this hole through taxes alone.
  - hoseyor 1y ago
    Not really. The top 1% item roughly $50 Trillion in assets. In 2010…15 years ago…that was only $15 Trillion. If you look at the graph of the national debt and the graph of the money supply, i.e. money printing, you will find they basically overlap, correlate, track. I assume I don’t have to point out that 50-36 is 15, i.e., basically the whole growth of assets has been roughly fueled by “money printing” fraud. (Yes, I’m simplifying a bit) What has basically occurred, is a fraud, what is not really different than loan fraud. The people in charge of the bank also wrote themselves loans they didn’t have to pay back and left the bank with the $36 trillion debt as they pocketed the both the $36 Trillion in debt, as well as plundered all the assets, i.e., much of government spending not in excess of revenue. It’s basically been a plundering operation that has only escalated over the last 25 years and is the greatest national security threat to the US and arguably the security of the whole planet’s civilization. It’s short sighted greed. And yes, this whole community is heavily involved and engaged in it as the VC money has flown like water for 20 years now … backed by fraudulent government “money printing” that has plundered regular people. It will have consequences, one way or another. The devil always comes to collect when you don’t expect and in the worst way. That’s not a superstition, it’s a metaphor of human nature learned over unknown millennia of the same catastrophic patterns. Frankly, the only thing that could save anything is to constrain the and revalue currency by seizing the plundered assets of the roughly top 1%, maybe even 3%, and paying down the national debt. It would be painful like drug rehab, but the alternative is OD and death and far greater suffering.
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
There are numerous errors in this. The most obvious is that social security money somehow disappears into a black hole. Of course it doesn't. All of that money is spent on something - usually useful things produced and sold by businesses. The subtext with complaints about government spending is usually that this money is being handed out to the morally undeserving, and this - by some bizarre alchemy - is the direct cause of a weaker dollar. In reality the deficit is the difference between money collected in taxes and money spent. Failing to close that gap by raising taxation on those who hoard wealth offshore, spend it on unproductive toys, and buy up key assets like property is an ideological choice, not an economic necessity. The deficit is a direct result of unproductive wealth hoarding facilitated by unnecessary tax cuts, not of public spending. But it's hard to get this point across in a country where "Why should I pay taxes to subsidise my neghbour's health care?" is taken seriously as a talking point, but "Why are corporations bankrupting half a million people year instead of paying out for health insurance as contracted?" is considered ideological extremism. As for the rest - the US was clearly at its strongest and most innovative and productive when taxes were high and the government was funding original R&D before handing it over to the private sector for marketing and commercial development. The funding part including training generations of PhDs. That's literally how the computer industry started. The idea that an ideologically pure private sector can do this on its own without getting stuck in the usual tar pits of quarterly short-termism, cranky narcissistic mismanagement, and toxic oligopoly is a pipe dream. US corporate culture can't do long-term strategy. It's always going to aim for the nearest short-term maximum while missing bigger rewards that are years or even decades out.
guelo 1y ago
A lot of our deficit is because of Trump's 10 year tax cuts, which Republicans are about to re-extend. Trump does not care about debt, he just wants to destroy government institutions.
vkou 1y ago
> The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. 1. No, it isn't. And if you think the finances of the US in 2025 are remotely similar to the finances and the world position of the British Empire in 1945, you are staggeringly wrong about either the past, or the present, or both. 2. And if it were, there's a million lower-ROI things that could be cut. Does an isolationist America really need eleven carrier groups, in a world where there are zero non-American ones?
mlazos 1y ago
The idea that cutting research will make a dent in the budget is a fantasy. NSF has a budget of 10 billion. Stop rationalizing gutting crucial programs because of “the deficit” Medicare, social security and the military are the main costs in the US budget. Sure universities are bloated, tackle that problem separately then.
patagurbon 1y ago
US research funding is not what you want to cut though. It is among the most productive funding possible and there is evidence aplenty that it pays for itself many times over. University bureaucracy is by and large fairly small for research. When you get into undergraduate education I will agree the administration has been bloated by the current system. But research has been surprisingly lean in my experience.
- monero-xmr 1y ago
  I hear this about everything. “Don’t cut this thing because it’s the most efficient and productive thing ever!” Food stamps, homeless funding, public transport, public schools. Supposedly every single thing is the most efficient thing ever and we can’t possibly cut a dollar
  - psyklic 1y ago
    In everything, there is some low-hanging fruit that yields an impactful outcome for minimal spending.
  - dweinus 1y ago
    All of your examples put together would be a rounding error in the US Military budget
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      Exactly, if their goal was to actually look for fraud and waste, why are they starting with such small potatoes like science funding? You'd think they'd focus on areas that are spending many more zeros, where they could have much more impact... It's like me saying I'm going to cut down my spending, and instead of moving houses to reduce my rent by $1000, I instead focus right away on cutting out my $5/mo VPS hosting service.
- Fomite 1y ago
  Echoing this as well - administration for research is fairly thin in every institution I've worked at. In my career, there's only one position I can definitely point to as "That shouldn't exist" - ironically, it's both one that played well with "The university should be more like a business" and was also, in effect, a retention move for their massively productive spouse.
Hammershaft 1y ago
US research funding still drives a positive return on investment for tax dollars because of the economic growth it drives, so ending research funding would expedite the debt crisis.
einpoklum 1y ago
Don't mix up the deficit and the debt (and the internal and external debt). US debt, especially internal debt, is somewhat artificial. For a given level of deficit - the US federal government has been choosing mostly to create debt, i.e. borrow, instead of creating money. So, it has been accruing more and more debt. This can be changed not just for the future, but retroactively, by creating an amount of money with which to pay those parts of the federal debt which the government wishes to disappear. There are some technical details here (e.g. Federal Reserve vs government action etc.; for which reason a suggested method for this has been minting Trillion-dollar coins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin), but of course the main obstacle is socio-political. I said "for a given level of deficit", but of course that is not a given: The federal government can increase overall taxation (or decrease overall spending). It has been decreasing taxes affecting large corporations and the wealthy, massively over past decades - a significant reason for the deficit. Not that I expect the US government to suddenly change its course of action, since the current arrangements work well for some (even if poorly for most). As for "the free market", that's just a contradiction in terms, markets are never free, "efficiency" is to a large extent a value judgement, and the larger owners of capital are rarely allowed to fail. It is more likely they would just have the entire economy be forced to bail them out via government action.
fuzztester 1y ago
>At least in the free market inefficient companies will eventually go defunct which frees those resources for more economically useful output. ha ha. you mean like in 2008 and 2009, the great recession (1), the subprime mortgage crisis (2), etc., and then things like: (1) the great recession (2) the subprime mortgage crisis TARP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Progra... terms floating around at that time, like: "privatize profits, socialize losses" "too big to fail" etc.?
- HDThoreaun 1y ago
  what happened to lehman bros, bear stearns...? The worst companies did fail. You would never see that in the government
  - fuzztester 1y ago
    Governments fail too - every four years (US), sometimes, or some multiple thereof.
    - HDThoreaun 1y ago
      thats not the government failing, its a political party failing. The administrative state remains intact.
      - fuzztester 1y ago
        both your sentences are bullshit. I am too busy today. will prove that tomorrow. meanwhile, chill, or warm, depending on your climatic zone and other factors.
- fuzztester 1y ago
  >"privatize profits, socialize losses" actually, IIRC now, that was "nationalize losses" - meaning, let us (fat cats) benefit when we make big profits, and let the public suffer when we make big losses - by making the government support / prop us up financially through acts / things like TARP. mea culpa.
favflam 1y ago
The dollar was strong, interest rates low, inflation rate competitively low (compare with other countries). The deficit just means the US government should collect more taxes and cut spending. Efficiency efforts should have gone towards neutering nimbys. Now with Republicans in power, we can expect tax revenue to take a huge hit, and economic recession, and the deficit to blow out. In the last 25 years, Republicans have consistently taken positive trends in gdp, unemployment, and deficits and tanked the economy.
adrr 1y ago
Tax revenue as percentage of GDP right now 17%. You can pick random countries and compare. China 26%, Sweden 41%, Japan 32% etc. Do you see the issue? When we ran a surplus during Clinton's admin, we were at 20%.
- _t9ow 1y ago
  > 17% ... When we ran a surplus during Clinton's admin, we were at 20%. Where did you get these figures from? According to OECD, the US' tax revenue-to-GDP ratio was 27.6% in 2022 and 25.2% in 2023: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-sub-issues/global-tax-revenues/revenue-statistics-united-states.pdf https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-sub-i... It was 28.3% in 2000, when Clinton was still President.
  - adrr 1y ago
    https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/government-revenue/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/gover... https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product $5 Trillion Tax Revenue $28.177 trillion GDP
bfdm 1y ago
> Last year the second largest outlay behind social security was the interest payment at a trillion dollars. This is a trillion dollars that cannot be used to provide government services. This is just very much not the case. The government can always spend to meet obligations unless it chooses not to, whether that's interest on unnecessary bonds or social security benefits. Any restriction on the arbitrary total "debt" is a self-imposed farce and should all stop playing along. Presenting a problem of tension for dollars is a tool used to justify withholding delivering services people want and need. It's a choice, when really the only scarcity is resources.
InDubioProRubio 1y ago
The free market gave you all these quality bathing spots: https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/ https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/
pron 1y ago
It's important to remember that government debt doesn't ever need to be repaid, sort of how an immortal man could indefinitely refinance loans. That he'd have to borrow again to repay the old loans (while maintaining the debt) is part of the mechanism. Such an immortal could have his debt grow indefinitely and still be fine as long as lenders believe he'll be able to afford paying the interest and that other lenders will be willing to refinance the loans when they expire. That's not to say that government debt couldn't become a problem, even a serious one, but as long as the economy grows fast enough to support the interest payments, it's not an "existential problem". The danger isn't so much the debt itself but in the confidence in the US economy falling below the level required to sustain that debt. I loan the US government money by buying treasury bills because I trust that when they mature, others would be willing to lend the US money. When this trust in the health of the US economy declines, then there's a problem with the debt, but then there are also other big problems. What you'll see is rising interest rates that is likely combined with an unpromising economy, and yeah, that's a serious problem. A high debt could definitely exacerbate it (and that's why it's helpful to slow down the growth of the debt or even reduce it if possible), but it's not its cause.
- pron 1y ago
  P.S. Another thing to remember is that government expenses are often investments. This doesn't only apply to health, education, law enforcement, and transportation infrastructure but also to social security. If people think they'll be left penniless at retirement, they'll spend less and save more. Borrowing to finance investment is a wise policy when the resulting growth can pay for the interest and then some, even if it means a growing debt. If you invest well, leveraging your investment is exactly what you should do.
SecretDreams 1y ago
> Last year the second largest outlay behind social security was the interest payment at a trillion dollars. And, yet, they're doing nothing to tax the wealth at the top and are actively trying to reduce their tax revenue streams. America doesn't need to cut every service they have to be OK. They're the most powerful country in the world.. or they were 90 days ago. Until the US actually looks hard at the wealth disparity and accumulation of the >0.1%, it's hard to take it seriously that they care about their debt. Likewise, in their current approach to MORE military spending, tariffs (crashing the economy tends to REDUCE tax Rev and increase deficits), and immigration campaign (you don't tackle the deficit by killing your workforce).
gcanyon 1y ago
I'm genuinely curious what you think the "right" level of debt is, and how you justify your answer. The U.S. has only been debt-free once in its history, so obviously "zero" isn't the answer. And it seems self-evident that you are correct that there is a level where it becomes untenable. But what amount, and why that amount?
littlestymaar 1y ago
> The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. It is not existential except for the financial markets, because they need safe securities: remove US bonds and modern finance grinds to halt. US debt is high just because the US government decided in the 80s that they will start borrowing money from the rich instead of taxing them. The money exists, and it doesn't have to be borrowed just because Laffer draw a cute curve on a restaurant napkin.
jt2190 1y ago
So your argument is that the U.S. is currently like wartime Britain, and that science funding specifically must be sacrificed despite the fact that is has created an economic boon that would help to pay down the debt: We just desperately need the money now for else the country could cease to exist, and we’ll sort out how to restore a science driven economy once the crisis is over?
moomin 1y ago
I don’t think your “existential problem” and Churchill’s are in any way equivalent.
rurp 1y ago
The national debt is a complete red herring here. It's a real problem, sure, but that is completely unrelated to these cuts. The party implementing these cuts is currently debating how many trillions of dollars to increase the national debt by. They are completely unserious about reducing federal debt payments and there is zero ambiguity about what they are saying, drafting, and voting on. That is also the same party that is actively attacking every single institution they deem too liberal. That's what they are doing here too: trying to destroy something they don't like, regardless of the consequences. The money being cut here is a drop in the bucket and the economic costs will almost certainly outweigh the savings. We shouldn't believe flimsy pretexts that are obviously lies.
- jack_h 1y ago
  I posted elsewhere about my displeasure with what is happening in congress. A large chunk of the Republican base is not willing to address the national debt; the $5 billion in cuts from the Senate bill going into reconciliation is a rounding error in the national budget. This seems like a golden opportunity for the Democrats to be the adults in the room and propose a solution to the problem with numbers, charts, economic projections, and math. We're not seeing that. The national debt is not the red herring rather all of the ideological arguments happening in this thread are. Politicians *should* be working on fixing the national debt, but their constituency keeps telling them they'd rather balkanize. So that's what will happen.
  - spopejoy 1y ago
    Your arguments are ideological as well. For one you fail to mention how much of the debt is due to war debt servicing and choose, like most debt hawks, to blame entitlements only. If debt was such a killer the US would have never waged the wars it did. Debt hawks have been saying Social security medicare and medicaid will bankrupt our country for decades. It hasn't happened.
comte7092 1y ago
The amount of money we are talking about for research is so small in comparison to the debt that it’s a red herring to even bring up the current debt level. As you’ve noted, even the largest parts of the budget are dwarfed by the total deficit. Researching is a rounding error. There’s this thing called taxes. We’ve had thirty years of tax hawks intentionally creating this situation that we find ourselves in, because they’ve cut taxes without any sense of responsibility for its impact on the debt/deficit. In fact that’s been their plan all along, to “starve the beast”, cause a crisis, and force cuts to popular programs that they wouldn’t get political support for otherwise.
- thatcat 1y ago
  Universities could pay for all of the research themselves theoretically considering they're the largest business in most states. Their portfolio income, the sports income, the donations, and the free real estate given to land grant universities that has been heavily monetized all add up. Of course I doubt they will allocate money to research, but they could if that was truely their purpose as an organization.
  - comte7092 1y ago
    There’s could and then there’s should. Could they? I don’t know, I’d have to look at their finances individually, it’s not like all of them have Harvard level endowments or alabamas football income. Should they? We literally built a juggernaut with our incumbent model that is the envy of the entire world and has produced untold innovation and wealth creation, for pennies of our tax dollars. The only reason I can see being advanced to undo that is pure dogma and blind faith in ideology.
    - thatcat 1y ago
      I think a lot has changed in the last 20 years. It would be great if they could solve the problem internally, but it's already being run like a business. The innovation for pennies on the tax dollar is due to graduate student labor with pay in pennies on the hour to subsidize what is often commercial research that could be done by a company.

by jack_h 1y ago

Retric 1y ago

US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. This is unlike say corn subsidies which not only reduce economic efficiency but also have direct negative heath impacts furthering the harm. Medicare spending is problematic because it’s consumptive, but there’s ways to minimize the expense without massively reducing care. The VA for example dramatically reduces their costs by operating independent medical facilities. That’s unlikely to fly, but assuming nothing changes is equally unlikely.

jack_h 1y ago
Even if those attribution studies are 100% correct that doesn’t mean this system optimally allocates resources. The ultimate issue with our social programs is due to demographics. An aging population whose replacement rate is projected to go negative (more deaths than births) within the next few years is catastrophic for the way we fund those programs. We absolutely should try and reduce their operating costs though; I agree with that.
- Retric 1y ago
  Noting people do is 100% optimal, but productivity gains mean resource constraint problems are more solvable than they first appear. People are worried about automation driving people out of the workplace while others are worried about a lack of workers due to changing demographics. What’s going to happen is the result of a bunch of different forces, simplified projections are easy to make and unlikely to prove accurate.
  - generativenoise 1y ago
    It is insane that people think we need a growing population to make this perfect population pyramid, to make things work easily in monetary terms with taxes. It really does ignore so many of the other forces as you mention. The picture looks radically different if you focus on real resources and allocation. In fact a growing population could make things very economically tenuous in real terms, depending on how a few key environmental factors play out over the coming centuries.
- monknomo 1y ago
  I mean, a relatively easy fix to a negative replacement rate (at least when you have a well-run, wealthy, attractive country) is immigration. Replacement rate isn't a problem when you let more folks in
  - consumer451 1y ago
    I agree, but this only works if one is willing to accept a changing racial profile/culture. It appears that many people do not accept this idea. Not just in the USA, but look at Japan or South Korea, for example. To me, the really interesting question is how to stop what appears to have been inevitable for the last 40+ years: when an economy becomes "advanced," the birth rates drop to tragic levels. I believe what could help here involves all kinds of non-market solutions which are hard to solve, and very not cool at the moment. The reason that I find this important is that even though I personally have no problem with race/culture mixing, in-fact I love Korean BBQ tacos... eventually with the immigration solution, there is an end state where all societies and countries are economically advanced, and have negative birth rates. What then? As a Star Trek fan, I have ideas about post-scarcity.

9283409232 1y ago

The problem with US debt comes from their unwillingness to tax billionaires. We just passed even more tax cuts for rich people and are scheduled to add more to the debt. Just tax rich people, it's not complicated.

jack_h 1y ago
The economic projections I’ve seen have shown taxing the rich will increase tax revenue by around 1.5% of GDP. We’re slated to borrow 7.3%. That math doesn’t work. To be fair, the republican math with cuts (assuming no tax cuts) also doesn’t work. Neither side is serious about this issue.
- 9283409232 1y ago
  Taxing billionaires is just one of many necessary steps but it is the most important and vital step in my opinion. There are fundamental problems with how the US is run down to the local level but it starts with taxing billionaires and getting money out of politics.
  - jack_h 1y ago
    To be clear, I think raising taxes on everyone is going to have to happen along with spending cuts.
    - 9283409232 1y ago
      What does the ideal solution look like to you? Are you happy with what DOGE is doing and if not what would you change? I'm asking genuinely because I don't think enough people put forth ideas in their own right.
  - jay_kyburz 1y ago
    Why point at billionaires, anyone with more than a million is living a comfortable life, everybody should be doing their part.

netsharc 1y ago

> The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Really...? Until Liberation Day the other week, I would doubt this. The whole world holds the US dollar, if the USA fails (side-glare at Donald and Elon), the whole world goes into chaos. If President Harris had said "OK world, we need to borrow x more dollars to keep this country running", people (private creditors and nations) would say "I'm pretty sure the USA will still be a solid economy in 10 (or 30 years), x% ROI if I lend them money? Sure!". And as this chart says, it's not all owned by "Chaina": https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-debt/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-...

jack_h 1y ago
This has nothing to do with Trump beyond the fact that his plans could hasten how quickly this blows up. Bond rates were already going up before the election, the bond market was already nervous. Your indication that the world isn’t starting to have doubts isn’t born out by the bond market rates. > And as this chart says, it's not all owned by "Chaina" I never said that. China has been rolling US debt off of their books for a decade now and moving towards BRICS. If we make this a partisan issue, which you appear to be, we won’t solve this problem. That would be a catastrophic mistake.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Bond rates were already going up before the election Treasuries behaving like a risk asset is 100% Trump. And it has nothing to do with him blowing out our deficit, it's 100% about stagflation and money markets.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  Are you saying that hastening the catastrophe is the right move?
  - jack_h 1y ago
    No.

regularization 1y ago

The way they math is presented is off. The US is deficit spending this year, yet you present the interest payment as something separate from the military. Obviously that interest is partially from the military spending the US makes this year that it has not paid for, military payments from last year it has not paid for etc. The billions sent to Israel, the Ukraine and the hundreds of military bases the US has spanning the globe are not cheap. Also, a lot of other military expenses are not counted as military expenditures in your math. A veteran whose leg was blown off overseas going to a VA hospital is not a military expenditure in this math. If you have an extremely narrow definition of military spending, you can make it look small, but if you count veteran's benefits, interest on past military adventures etc. It looks larger. Why are Navy ships being shot at off Yemen, to cover for what the UN committee investigating it found is an ongoing genocide in Gaza. Which is also helping bankruptcy the US, as you pointed out

jack_h 1y ago
I have no idea what you’re talking about honestly. The data for government spending can be seen in multiple places, here is the CBO numbers (this might be an older article or out of date, I don’t have time or access to a laptop right now). https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61172 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61172
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  What the GP is talking about is that there are differing opinions on what counts as "military spending" or "defense spending". The CBO has its definition, but that is not universally accepted, particularly by people who think that the USA spends far too much on its military. The question of whether or not e.g. veteran's health care should be considered part of military spending is not a stupid one, even if people may differ on their answers.
  - jack_h 1y ago
    I suppose that’s fair, but kind of tangential. The point I was making was that if discretionary spending, approximately 25% of outlays, could be completely cut we would still have a deficit. I’m not suggesting this is even possible, I’m merely using it as a demonstration of the scale of the problem.

mindslight 1y ago

Where does government subsidized loans to banks (eg Fed, Fannie, Freddie) sit in your list? The government is a monetary sovereign - it cannot run out of dollars to use. The actual constraint is that creating too much new money creates too much price inflation. But for the past decades most monetary inflation has been flowing into the financial sector and bidding up the asset bubbles, with the "fiscal responsibility" political narrative merely being a dishonest cover to keep that gravy train flowing.

contemporary343 1y ago

Actually overheads for many universities were sometimes higher in the late 1990s (and there were some minor scandals associated with this). And remind me again, what fraction of our GDP is indirect costs to universities? (< 0.1%). And what are the benefits? Well, indirect costs are how the U.S. government builds up a distributed network of scientific and technical infrastructure and capacity. This capacity serves the national interest. If you think you're going to help debt by cutting indirect costs and crippling university research permanently, may I introduce you to the foundational notions of a knowledge economy and how fundamental advances feed into technology developments that increase productivity and thus GDP. Permanently reducing growth is another way of making debt servicing worse.

TYPE_FASTER 1y ago

Federally funded R&D was around 3.4% of the GDP in 2021: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23339 https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23339.

tvier 1y ago
The chart in that link seems to indicate it was 0.6%, while total R&D funding was 3.4%

tw04 1y ago

I guess what is your point though? The current administration has absolutely no plans to reduce debt as a part of these funding cuts. They plan on INCREASING debt by issuing massive tax breaks that no amount of cutting will fund. It’s right there in their own budget. If anything they’re taking the worst of all worlds by sacrificing future revenue (by way of new technology that can be sold) to give money to people who don’t need it right now. If you think the US is going to remain the center of the western world’s economic universe, or that any of our allies are going to remain on a dollar standard when we can’t be relied upon militarily or otherwise, I think you’re in for a very rude awakening.

apical_dendrite 1y ago

How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war and there were coal shortages. Britain was at a point where without massive aid from the US huge numbers of people would die of cold or starvation. The US has huge surpluses of food and energy. The idea that we're in such a crisis that we have to eat our own seed corn (massive cuts to science research which is one of the main drivers of US economic growth) is crazy.

philwelch 1y ago
> How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war and there were coal shortages. Up until you got to the rationing and coal shortages I think the parallels with the contemporary US are pretty obvious.
- apical_dendrite 1y ago
  No, not really. The fact that we import so much is a function of our wealth, not our poverty. We import food because we like to have a variety of produce year round and we like alcohol from foreign countries and we can afford it. Britain was importing food because otherwise there would be famine. These are not equivalent situations.
  - philwelch 1y ago
    It's true that the United States does not depend on food and energy imports. However, the growing fiscal situation and unsustainable costs of maintaining global hegemony are very similar to that of Britain in the 20th century, as is the declining competitiveness of American industry. You're never going to find any exact or perfect historical parallels but there are enough similarities to cause concern.

grafmax 1y ago

The idea that the free market will self-correct and optimize outcomes is a well-documented fantasy. Markets don’t account for externalities, they concentrate wealth (and therefore political power), and they routinely underprovide merit goods like education, healthcare, and basic research (things that benefit society broadly but aren’t immediately profitable). As for how to address budget issues, the solution is simple: tax the rich.

BobbyJo 1y ago
Im afraid you'd need to be pretty liberal with your definition of rich at this point to dig us out of this hole through taxes alone.
- hoseyor 1y ago
  Not really. The top 1% item roughly $50 Trillion in assets. In 2010…15 years ago…that was only $15 Trillion. If you look at the graph of the national debt and the graph of the money supply, i.e. money printing, you will find they basically overlap, correlate, track. I assume I don’t have to point out that 50-36 is 15, i.e., basically the whole growth of assets has been roughly fueled by “money printing” fraud. (Yes, I’m simplifying a bit) What has basically occurred, is a fraud, what is not really different than loan fraud. The people in charge of the bank also wrote themselves loans they didn’t have to pay back and left the bank with the $36 trillion debt as they pocketed the both the $36 Trillion in debt, as well as plundered all the assets, i.e., much of government spending not in excess of revenue. It’s basically been a plundering operation that has only escalated over the last 25 years and is the greatest national security threat to the US and arguably the security of the whole planet’s civilization. It’s short sighted greed. And yes, this whole community is heavily involved and engaged in it as the VC money has flown like water for 20 years now … backed by fraudulent government “money printing” that has plundered regular people. It will have consequences, one way or another. The devil always comes to collect when you don’t expect and in the worst way. That’s not a superstition, it’s a metaphor of human nature learned over unknown millennia of the same catastrophic patterns. Frankly, the only thing that could save anything is to constrain the and revalue currency by seizing the plundered assets of the roughly top 1%, maybe even 3%, and paying down the national debt. It would be painful like drug rehab, but the alternative is OD and death and far greater suffering.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago

There are numerous errors in this. The most obvious is that social security money somehow disappears into a black hole. Of course it doesn't. All of that money is spent on something - usually useful things produced and sold by businesses. The subtext with complaints about government spending is usually that this money is being handed out to the morally undeserving, and this - by some bizarre alchemy - is the direct cause of a weaker dollar. In reality the deficit is the difference between money collected in taxes and money spent. Failing to close that gap by raising taxation on those who hoard wealth offshore, spend it on unproductive toys, and buy up key assets like property is an ideological choice, not an economic necessity. The deficit is a direct result of unproductive wealth hoarding facilitated by unnecessary tax cuts, not of public spending. But it's hard to get this point across in a country where "Why should I pay taxes to subsidise my neghbour's health care?" is taken seriously as a talking point, but "Why are corporations bankrupting half a million people year instead of paying out for health insurance as contracted?" is considered ideological extremism. As for the rest - the US was clearly at its strongest and most innovative and productive when taxes were high and the government was funding original R&D before handing it over to the private sector for marketing and commercial development. The funding part including training generations of PhDs. That's literally how the computer industry started. The idea that an ideologically pure private sector can do this on its own without getting stuck in the usual tar pits of quarterly short-termism, cranky narcissistic mismanagement, and toxic oligopoly is a pipe dream. US corporate culture can't do long-term strategy. It's always going to aim for the nearest short-term maximum while missing bigger rewards that are years or even decades out.

guelo 1y ago

A lot of our deficit is because of Trump's 10 year tax cuts, which Republicans are about to re-extend. Trump does not care about debt, he just wants to destroy government institutions.

vkou 1y ago

> The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. 1. No, it isn't. And if you think the finances of the US in 2025 are remotely similar to the finances and the world position of the British Empire in 1945, you are staggeringly wrong about either the past, or the present, or both. 2. And if it were, there's a million lower-ROI things that could be cut. Does an isolationist America really need eleven carrier groups, in a world where there are zero non-American ones?

mlazos 1y ago

The idea that cutting research will make a dent in the budget is a fantasy. NSF has a budget of 10 billion. Stop rationalizing gutting crucial programs because of “the deficit” Medicare, social security and the military are the main costs in the US budget. Sure universities are bloated, tackle that problem separately then.

patagurbon 1y ago

US research funding is not what you want to cut though. It is among the most productive funding possible and there is evidence aplenty that it pays for itself many times over. University bureaucracy is by and large fairly small for research. When you get into undergraduate education I will agree the administration has been bloated by the current system. But research has been surprisingly lean in my experience.

monero-xmr 1y ago
I hear this about everything. “Don’t cut this thing because it’s the most efficient and productive thing ever!” Food stamps, homeless funding, public transport, public schools. Supposedly every single thing is the most efficient thing ever and we can’t possibly cut a dollar
- psyklic 1y ago
  In everything, there is some low-hanging fruit that yields an impactful outcome for minimal spending.
- dweinus 1y ago
  All of your examples put together would be a rounding error in the US Military budget
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Exactly, if their goal was to actually look for fraud and waste, why are they starting with such small potatoes like science funding? You'd think they'd focus on areas that are spending many more zeros, where they could have much more impact... It's like me saying I'm going to cut down my spending, and instead of moving houses to reduce my rent by $1000, I instead focus right away on cutting out my $5/mo VPS hosting service.
Fomite 1y ago
Echoing this as well - administration for research is fairly thin in every institution I've worked at. In my career, there's only one position I can definitely point to as "That shouldn't exist" - ironically, it's both one that played well with "The university should be more like a business" and was also, in effect, a retention move for their massively productive spouse.

Hammershaft 1y ago

US research funding still drives a positive return on investment for tax dollars because of the economic growth it drives, so ending research funding would expedite the debt crisis.

einpoklum 1y ago

Don't mix up the deficit and the debt (and the internal and external debt). US debt, especially internal debt, is somewhat artificial. For a given level of deficit - the US federal government has been choosing mostly to create debt, i.e. borrow, instead of creating money. So, it has been accruing more and more debt. This can be changed not just for the future, but retroactively, by creating an amount of money with which to pay those parts of the federal debt which the government wishes to disappear. There are some technical details here (e.g. Federal Reserve vs government action etc.; for which reason a suggested method for this has been minting Trillion-dollar coins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin), but of course the main obstacle is socio-political. I said "for a given level of deficit", but of course that is not a given: The federal government can increase overall taxation (or decrease overall spending). It has been decreasing taxes affecting large corporations and the wealthy, massively over past decades - a significant reason for the deficit. Not that I expect the US government to suddenly change its course of action, since the current arrangements work well for some (even if poorly for most). As for "the free market", that's just a contradiction in terms, markets are never free, "efficiency" is to a large extent a value judgement, and the larger owners of capital are rarely allowed to fail. It is more likely they would just have the entire economy be forced to bail them out via government action.

fuzztester 1y ago

>At least in the free market inefficient companies will eventually go defunct which frees those resources for more economically useful output. ha ha. you mean like in 2008 and 2009, the great recession (1), the subprime mortgage crisis (2), etc., and then things like: (1) the great recession (2) the subprime mortgage crisis TARP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Progra... terms floating around at that time, like: "privatize profits, socialize losses" "too big to fail" etc.?

HDThoreaun 1y ago
what happened to lehman bros, bear stearns...? The worst companies did fail. You would never see that in the government
- fuzztester 1y ago
  Governments fail too - every four years (US), sometimes, or some multiple thereof.
  - HDThoreaun 1y ago
    thats not the government failing, its a political party failing. The administrative state remains intact.
    - fuzztester 1y ago
      both your sentences are bullshit. I am too busy today. will prove that tomorrow. meanwhile, chill, or warm, depending on your climatic zone and other factors.
fuzztester 1y ago
>"privatize profits, socialize losses" actually, IIRC now, that was "nationalize losses" - meaning, let us (fat cats) benefit when we make big profits, and let the public suffer when we make big losses - by making the government support / prop us up financially through acts / things like TARP. mea culpa.

favflam 1y ago

The dollar was strong, interest rates low, inflation rate competitively low (compare with other countries). The deficit just means the US government should collect more taxes and cut spending. Efficiency efforts should have gone towards neutering nimbys. Now with Republicans in power, we can expect tax revenue to take a huge hit, and economic recession, and the deficit to blow out. In the last 25 years, Republicans have consistently taken positive trends in gdp, unemployment, and deficits and tanked the economy.

adrr 1y ago

Tax revenue as percentage of GDP right now 17%. You can pick random countries and compare. China 26%, Sweden 41%, Japan 32% etc. Do you see the issue? When we ran a surplus during Clinton's admin, we were at 20%.

_t9ow 1y ago
> 17% ... When we ran a surplus during Clinton's admin, we were at 20%. Where did you get these figures from? According to OECD, the US' tax revenue-to-GDP ratio was 27.6% in 2022 and 25.2% in 2023: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-sub-issues/global-tax-revenues/revenue-statistics-united-states.pdf https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-sub-i... It was 28.3% in 2000, when Clinton was still President.
- adrr 1y ago
  https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/government-revenue/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/gover... https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product $5 Trillion Tax Revenue $28.177 trillion GDP

bfdm 1y ago

> Last year the second largest outlay behind social security was the interest payment at a trillion dollars. This is a trillion dollars that cannot be used to provide government services. This is just very much not the case. The government can always spend to meet obligations unless it chooses not to, whether that's interest on unnecessary bonds or social security benefits. Any restriction on the arbitrary total "debt" is a self-imposed farce and should all stop playing along. Presenting a problem of tension for dollars is a tool used to justify withholding delivering services people want and need. It's a choice, when really the only scarcity is resources.

InDubioProRubio 1y ago

The free market gave you all these quality bathing spots: https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/ https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/

pron 1y ago

It's important to remember that government debt doesn't ever need to be repaid, sort of how an immortal man could indefinitely refinance loans. That he'd have to borrow again to repay the old loans (while maintaining the debt) is part of the mechanism. Such an immortal could have his debt grow indefinitely and still be fine as long as lenders believe he'll be able to afford paying the interest and that other lenders will be willing to refinance the loans when they expire. That's not to say that government debt couldn't become a problem, even a serious one, but as long as the economy grows fast enough to support the interest payments, it's not an "existential problem". The danger isn't so much the debt itself but in the confidence in the US economy falling below the level required to sustain that debt. I loan the US government money by buying treasury bills because I trust that when they mature, others would be willing to lend the US money. When this trust in the health of the US economy declines, then there's a problem with the debt, but then there are also other big problems. What you'll see is rising interest rates that is likely combined with an unpromising economy, and yeah, that's a serious problem. A high debt could definitely exacerbate it (and that's why it's helpful to slow down the growth of the debt or even reduce it if possible), but it's not its cause.

pron 1y ago
P.S. Another thing to remember is that government expenses are often investments. This doesn't only apply to health, education, law enforcement, and transportation infrastructure but also to social security. If people think they'll be left penniless at retirement, they'll spend less and save more. Borrowing to finance investment is a wise policy when the resulting growth can pay for the interest and then some, even if it means a growing debt. If you invest well, leveraging your investment is exactly what you should do.

SecretDreams 1y ago

> Last year the second largest outlay behind social security was the interest payment at a trillion dollars. And, yet, they're doing nothing to tax the wealth at the top and are actively trying to reduce their tax revenue streams. America doesn't need to cut every service they have to be OK. They're the most powerful country in the world.. or they were 90 days ago. Until the US actually looks hard at the wealth disparity and accumulation of the >0.1%, it's hard to take it seriously that they care about their debt. Likewise, in their current approach to MORE military spending, tariffs (crashing the economy tends to REDUCE tax Rev and increase deficits), and immigration campaign (you don't tackle the deficit by killing your workforce).

gcanyon 1y ago

I'm genuinely curious what you think the "right" level of debt is, and how you justify your answer. The U.S. has only been debt-free once in its history, so obviously "zero" isn't the answer. And it seems self-evident that you are correct that there is a level where it becomes untenable. But what amount, and why that amount?

littlestymaar 1y ago

> The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. It is not existential except for the financial markets, because they need safe securities: remove US bonds and modern finance grinds to halt. US debt is high just because the US government decided in the 80s that they will start borrowing money from the rich instead of taxing them. The money exists, and it doesn't have to be borrowed just because Laffer draw a cute curve on a restaurant napkin.

jt2190 1y ago

So your argument is that the U.S. is currently like wartime Britain, and that science funding specifically must be sacrificed despite the fact that is has created an economic boon that would help to pay down the debt: We just desperately need the money now for else the country could cease to exist, and we’ll sort out how to restore a science driven economy once the crisis is over?

moomin 1y ago

I don’t think your “existential problem” and Churchill’s are in any way equivalent.

rurp 1y ago

The national debt is a complete red herring here. It's a real problem, sure, but that is completely unrelated to these cuts. The party implementing these cuts is currently debating how many trillions of dollars to increase the national debt by. They are completely unserious about reducing federal debt payments and there is zero ambiguity about what they are saying, drafting, and voting on. That is also the same party that is actively attacking every single institution they deem too liberal. That's what they are doing here too: trying to destroy something they don't like, regardless of the consequences. The money being cut here is a drop in the bucket and the economic costs will almost certainly outweigh the savings. We shouldn't believe flimsy pretexts that are obviously lies.

jack_h 1y ago
I posted elsewhere about my displeasure with what is happening in congress. A large chunk of the Republican base is not willing to address the national debt; the $5 billion in cuts from the Senate bill going into reconciliation is a rounding error in the national budget. This seems like a golden opportunity for the Democrats to be the adults in the room and propose a solution to the problem with numbers, charts, economic projections, and math. We're not seeing that. The national debt is not the red herring rather all of the ideological arguments happening in this thread are. Politicians *should* be working on fixing the national debt, but their constituency keeps telling them they'd rather balkanize. So that's what will happen.
- spopejoy 1y ago
  Your arguments are ideological as well. For one you fail to mention how much of the debt is due to war debt servicing and choose, like most debt hawks, to blame entitlements only. If debt was such a killer the US would have never waged the wars it did. Debt hawks have been saying Social security medicare and medicaid will bankrupt our country for decades. It hasn't happened.

comte7092 1y ago

The amount of money we are talking about for research is so small in comparison to the debt that it’s a red herring to even bring up the current debt level. As you’ve noted, even the largest parts of the budget are dwarfed by the total deficit. Researching is a rounding error. There’s this thing called taxes. We’ve had thirty years of tax hawks intentionally creating this situation that we find ourselves in, because they’ve cut taxes without any sense of responsibility for its impact on the debt/deficit. In fact that’s been their plan all along, to “starve the beast”, cause a crisis, and force cuts to popular programs that they wouldn’t get political support for otherwise.

thatcat 1y ago
Universities could pay for all of the research themselves theoretically considering they're the largest business in most states. Their portfolio income, the sports income, the donations, and the free real estate given to land grant universities that has been heavily monetized all add up. Of course I doubt they will allocate money to research, but they could if that was truely their purpose as an organization.
- comte7092 1y ago
  There’s could and then there’s should. Could they? I don’t know, I’d have to look at their finances individually, it’s not like all of them have Harvard level endowments or alabamas football income. Should they? We literally built a juggernaut with our incumbent model that is the envy of the entire world and has produced untold innovation and wealth creation, for pennies of our tax dollars. The only reason I can see being advanced to undo that is pure dogma and blind faith in ideology.
  - thatcat 1y ago
    I think a lot has changed in the last 20 years. It would be great if they could solve the problem internally, but it's already being run like a business. The innovation for pennies on the tax dollar is due to graduate student labor with pay in pennies on the hour to subsidize what is often commercial research that could be done by a company.