6 ms·
The NSF budget is ~$10billion. That's about half of NASA's, 1.2% of the DoD's, 0.5% of the discretionary budget ($1.7 trillion). Why is this the focus of the a
by chairhairair 1y ago
The NSF budget is ~$10billion. That's about half of NASA's, 1.2% of the DoD's, 0.5% of the discretionary budget ($1.7 trillion).
Why is this the focus of the admin? Science is one of the few things the US is doing well.
- rokkamokka 1y agoThe focus is robbing the treasury to give tax breaks to the rich.
- Workaccount2 1y agoTrump said yesterday he wants to raise taxes on people earning over $2.5MM[1] People on the left are going to be caught totally flat-footed if they don't pull their head out of their bubble. Trump is a populist president. He was elected by working class individuals and so far he has shown every intent of following through for them. People on the left don't recognize it because they don't recognize the tools that right wing people use to stimulate the working class. Right now, if Trump has his way, people under $150k will pay no income tax, no tax on tips, increased tax on millionaire earners, and tariffs to shield American blue collar jobs. Trump is dangerous because he is an idiot and recklessly pulling levers. He is clearly bent on the idea of abolishing democracy so he can be the king of America savior of the factory worker. He is clearly not working for billionaires when he tanked the stock market and spiked bond rates playing his tariff game. Stop using that dog whistle because it makes it clear you are ungrounded from what is happening, unless all you care about is praise from other detached people. [1]https://www.ft.com/content/93a064db-624d-413f-a751-0b957f8e3cfa https://www.ft.com/content/93a064db-624d-413f-a751-0b957f8e3...
- danny_codes 1y agoSeeing as the majority of words coming out of Trump are hyperbole or just straight up lies.. well believe it when it’s written into law.
- matwood 1y agoNot sure why you're downvoted. It's part of Trumps schtick. He says contradicting ideas, and since everyone knows he lies, people pick the idea they want to believe. Pretty wild actually.
- pstuart 1y ago> Trump said yesterday he wants to raise taxes on people earning over $2.5MM[1] This has been countered better elsewhere, but the gist is that this proposed taxation is for posturing only -- it's taxes on wages, not on income, and the rich don't get their wealth from wages.
- eli_gottlieb 1y ago>Trump said yesterday he wants to raise taxes on people earning over $2.5MM[1] Great, so he won't need to cut the NSF then?
- godshatter 1y agoAccording to the national debt clock, we're at around 36.8T in debt. I don't know if that's his motivation or not, but we're not starting all this from a balanced budget.
- eli_gottlieb 1y agoThat's not a reason to cut anything in particular, especially something as cheap in raw cost and valuable in ROI, among federal programs, as the NSF.
- Onawa 1y ago> tariffs to shield American blue collar jobs Except that Trump's tariffs are causing massive financial uncertainty for small/medium-size businesses. If you want to onshore manufacturing and production, and specifically build up the blue-collar class, you don't implement tariffs immediately and unilaterally. You plan for them to be implemented over time and give businesses the opportunity to shift their procurement and production to domestic sources. When you implement tariffs with no warning, the only businesses that can absorb those increased costs are the largest businesses. Then those large businesses can also start to buy up every other business, or at least outcompete on price long enough to monopolize the market.
- Workaccount2 1y agoAs I said, >Trump is dangerous because he is an idiot and recklessly pulling levers
- carefulfungi 1y agoTrump says everything basically and then just repeats what his MAGA crowd cheers the loudest about. "Trump said..." isn't a meaningful indicator of his intent, his beliefs, or his "plan".
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago[flagged]
- sirbutters 1y ago[flagged]
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago[flagged]
- specialist 1y agoYes but: > He is clearly not working for billionaires... Not working for Wall St or Main St. It's a food fight between opposing elites. ("The grass suffers when elephants fight.") As you surely know, some do advocate crashing our economy, enabling them to seize even more power. They use shibboleths like dark enlightenment, free enterprise, taxation is theft, yadda yadda.
- rozap 1y agoI'll believe it when I see it. "Trump said..." is the precursor to winning the fooled me again award.
- freejazz 1y agoWhere's Trump's socialized medicine plan? That's by far the most populist desire of populist America. It's very easy to get caught up in the name of things and not look at it substantively, which is what you seem to be attacking the other poster for. Trump might have a populist appeal, but it doesn't make him a populist. The weight of Trump's actions and promises lie in all this deportation and culture war nonsense, not actually populist solutions to popular problems. None of these cuts are going to benefit the American populace at all. I doubt there will be a reduction in the taxes most Americans pay (this is just some new rhetoric from Trump, likely stemming from his horrible approval ratings because his administration is operating like shit), but there is already a reduction in the services populist America receives like social security and medicare. The idea that a politician who seems to fundamentally want to destroy the mechanical functions of the government, operate an executive branch that is beyond the reproach of the courts, and privatize America's crucial social programs, does not comport with populism. I don't even think the notion that Trump isn't working for billionaires because he tanked the stock market even makes sense. Did you not see the video where he points to his friend who made hundreds of millions that day? While smiling, joking, laughing? He's letting his best friends do inside trades on the huge market-moving moves Trump makes in the news and you think it's somehow not cronyism? I'm sorry, but your intuitions are off.
- Workaccount2 1y agoAs I mentioned: >People on the left don't recognize it [populism] because they don't recognize the tools that right wing people use to stimulate the working class. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole because it takes years to escape the ideological camp you grew into. But suffice to say, both sides ultimately want the same things and disagree on the route to take to that destination (while telling their base that obviously they are right, and obviously the other side is just evil).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- freejazz 1y agoI'm not sure how your post doesn't fall for exactly what you claim to be criticizing. You do not engage with the substance of anything I said and instead just name call. I'm not talking about the route, I'm talking about the destination. A socialized medical plan is incredibly popular on both sides of the political spectrum and polls well with Trump's supporters. That's not an avenue, that's a destination. I have a feeling you will twist this around and try to make it how it can either be served by market forces or the gov't and that's just "idealogical" but populism is an ideology which I am accusing you of not understanding. You didn't engage with that. You just repeated your premise.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- stevenwoo 1y agoTrump cannot raise taxes, he only can impose tariffs under laws that Congress could rescind if they wished to, and only Congress can change tax laws. Trump also took both sides on issues while campaigning and low info voters ate it up and ignored the parts they did not like, it's the gish gallop, and Trump never stops campaigning with rallies even after winning office. Nothing that he says matters, it's what actions they have taken that matter. The bill in Congress now does not have anything like what he said yesterday about raising taxes on millionaires.
- kelnos 1y agoI don't particularly care about anything Trump says. He says a lot of things. A lot of what he says is just outright lies. A lot of what he says is just to make a particular audience happy at a particular point in time, and ends up having little relation to any actions he ends up taking. Even when it seems likely that something he says is something he actually wants to do, he'll walk it back in a heartbeat and pretend the opposite was his position all along, if he believes doing so will make him look better. What actually matters is what he does. And nothing that he has done suggests to me that he will actually push for tax increases on the rich. It would be great to be proven wrong here, but I'm not holding my breath. (Regardless, Trump can't raise taxes on anyone. Congress does that. On tax policy, it's not clear that even the MAGA fools in Congress will play ball if it upsets the rich people in their states.)
- intermerda 1y ago> Trump said yesterday he wants to raise taxes on people earning over $2.5MM[1] He also said he would end the Ukraine war on day 1. > He is clearly not working for billionaires when he tanked the stock market and spiked bond rates playing his tariff game. Stop using that dog whistle because it makes it clear you are ungrounded from what is happening, unless all you care about is praise from other detached people. Of course not. Why would anyone get the idea that Trump is working for billionaires? It's not as if he hawked cars on the White House lawn for the world's richest man. Speaking of ungrounded, detached people..
- watersb 1y agoYou don't have to be a billionaire to purchase a cabinet position in the Trump White House, but it helps. Trump makes the billionaires work for _him_.
- thrance 1y agoHe is a billionaire himself, his admin has the most billionaires of any admin ever. He passed tariffs, which are a direct tax on the working class, he passed massuve tax cuts profiting mostly the wealthy, he cut every welfare programs which only benefit the poor.
- tantalor 1y agoLess public funding -> less competition for private sector R&D, e.g. big pharma
- fabian2k 1y agoThe research that NSF funds is not in competition to private companies, it's mostly basic research. To the contrary, it's part of an important pipeline for training young scientists. And many of those later will work e.g. in pharma companies.
- arrosenberg 1y agoI doubt that - pharma and biotech are some of the biggest benefactors of government funded research.
- Kalanos 1y agoNo. Pharma acquires these gov-funded companies. The gov de-risks them for pharma.
- Fomite 1y agoBig pharma has thrived by letting public sector R&D do basic discovery that's high risk, and then pick up the successful projects as part of public-private commercialization programs.
- hackyhacky 1y ago> Why is this the focus of the admin? Science is one of the few things the US is doing well. Real answer: universities are "woke" and liberal. This is their punishment. Destroying science research is just collateral damage.
- bpodgursky 1y agoThere are very few places an administration can cut costs without touching entitlements. Until voters stop punishing politicians for raising the retirement age or trimming wasteful healthcare spending, they will cut the discretionary budget.
- alabastervlog 1y agoSocial Security doesn't come out of the general budget.
- bpodgursky 1y agoWho cares? It contributes to the deficit, which is what matters for fiscal policy.
- alabastervlog 1y agoIt does not.
- mikeyouse 1y agoSocial security is entirely self funded, has a large surplus in the form of the SS Trust Fund (that’s being spent down) and has contributed $0 to the deficit or debt. You should really learn the basic facts about something like that if you’re going to support cuts to the program.
- bpodgursky 1y agoThe SS Trust Fund is numbers on a spreadsheet. It doesn't matter. It's gone and spent. The question is about real actual resource distribution. SS is drawing more resources from young people than it is giving back. That's an actual problem, no matter how many tabs you add to your excel spreadsheet.
- alabastervlog 1y agoThis post is nonsensical. > The SS Trust Fund is numbers on a spreadsheet. It doesn't matter. "Numbers on a spreadsheet" is meaningless, you just described functionally all of accounting for the entire economy, and if that's a reason it "doesn't matter" then the debt also "doesn't matter" because it's also just numbers on a spreadsheet. What do you think nearly all money is? > It's gone and spent. Simply, factually wrong. If so, then so's your 401k. And all the money in your bank account. > The question is about real actual resource distribution. SS is drawing more resources from young people than it is giving back. That's an actual problem, no matter how many tabs you add to your excel spreadsheet. You're wrong about Social Security (and medicare, for that matter) contributing to the budget deficit, so you're trying to change the topic to "is social security's funding fair?"
- qgin 1y agoTo own the libs, to stick it to the “experts”. It’s sad, but that’s the whole thing.
- UncleMeat 1y agoThe thought leaders within the Trump administration simply hate academia. They've said it out loud over and over. Folks like Yarvin or Rufo would like the university system in the US to be reduced to smoldering ash and replaced with ideologically focused universities that exist to teach particular religious, social, and economic values. The issue is not that they don't like the NSF in general or that science funding is breaking the bank. The issue is that people they hate rely on the NSF. This is a pretty old belief system amongst conservatives. God and Man at Yale was published seventy years ago and argued that universities should actively teach that Christ is divine and that free market capitalism is the best thing ever at all times and in all venues.
- inverted_flag 1y agoScience sometimes says things that disagree with MAGA ideology and so it must be destroyed.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- xhkkffbf 1y ago[flagged]
- dralley 1y agoThey're pushing a 55% budget cut. There is absolutely no universe in which you can justify that with rhetoric around "DEI" science. This is going to cut very, very deep into basic STEM / biomedical research. They're cancelling mRNA research, they're flagging research that uses words like "trauma" or studies how medications impact men and women differently. There's no sensible agenda behind all of this, it's just backlash and destruction done haphazardly. This is no different from the Department of Defense deleting the Tuskegee Airmen from the website because "DEI", except far far more consequential.
- xhkkffbf 1y ago[flagged]
- pinko 1y agoNonsense. NSF awards are all public. If you could actually give enough examples of these "extremely large" awards to constitute 55% of the NSF budget you would have.
- lokhura 1y agoHere you go https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092-4246-91A5-58EEF99750BC https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092... It's not 55%, it's more like 25% of the budget.
- pinko 1y agoSo after the first simple question, we're already at less than half the original claimed figure of 55% (a bad sign for its credibility, if you're a Bayesian!). But more importantly, I'm familiar with the linked document, and it's garbage. It was thrown together practically overnight to justify a political decision that had already been made, and in its incompetent haste, flagged proposals that had phrases like "diversity of sources" that had nothing to do with DEI and included them in the totals. Not a credible source.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- josephcsible 1y agoA billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money. More seriously, the NSF isn't the focus of the admin. They're going through every federal agency making cuts, not singling out this one in particular.
- matwood 1y ago> They're going through every federal agency making cuts, not singling out this one in particular. That's BS. They are already bragging about raising defense spending.
- josephcsible 1y ago> They are already bragging about raising defense spending. Sure, but that's the exception. The cuts to the NSF are the norm.
- philipwhiuk 1y agoIt only sounds like an exception because you group it into one big chunk. If you actually split up the line items to the point where NASA and the NSF are separate it would be 9 exceptions or more.
- fedsocpuppet 1y agoA $100B exception that wipes out all of their own-the-libs cuts
- odo1242 1y agoThe amount they plan on raising defense spending by more than cancels all other things we plan to save, even before considering tax cuts. At the current rate, the national deficit (rate of growth of national debt) is expected to be about double what it was (on average, over four years) compared to the last presidency. Not to mention that the Department of Defense has never passed a financial audit in the last seven years and money frequently disappears into contractors who are known to delay projects on purpose to make more money.
- 1y ago
- jhp123 1y agoI'm not the first one to see parallels to the Cultural Revolution. Policies like purging the intelligentsia and sending educated urban people to go work in the fields weren't motivated by any thought out plan, but by an irrational sense of resentment against "elites" and a desire for "purity".
- deepfriedbits 1y agoI'm glad you mentioned this. I've heard analogies to the Cultural Revolution a few times in recent weeks and it's spot on.
- stevenwoo 1y agoArts/academia/sciences are being disciplined for thought crimes and will learn one way or another through this coercion to bend the knee, it explains the crackdown on student protests against Israeli genocide, science funding, the arts takeover, using all the federal levers of funding and immigration.
- Jordan-117 1y ago"The Disturbing Rise of MAGA Maoism" [The Atlantic]: https://archive.is/j0lGD https://archive.is/j0lGD This probably won't end with millions of Americans starving to death, but I'm sure the administration is hard at work looking for ways to destroy our seed corn.
- jorblumesea 1y agoThere are other parallels, such as using young indoctrinated students being used as political weapons. DOGE for example.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- frogperson 1y agoTrump has been compromised, who ever is actually running the show is hell bent on destroying the US.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- unit149 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]