7 ms·
You people are too good at critical thinking to read "an investment of 500 million euros between 2025 and 2027" and not instantly write this off as empty grands
by perihelions 1y ago
You people are too good at critical thinking to read "an investment of 500 million euros between 2025 and 2027" and not instantly write this off as empty grandstanding.
How much does—or did, recently—the United States federal government invest in scientists in the USA? Is it ~$70 billion a year? [0]
Europe can achieve America's (past) results when Europe starts talking with money. Science migration has historically gone in one direction across the Atlantic, and it is 100% about who pays better. The EU isn't remotely close to funding its own scientists properly—let alone attract new ones from abroad!
If European science benefits from the ongoing government implosion in the USA, that'd be entirely due to the US' unforced error. EU's politicians deserve no credit.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_policy_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_policy_of_the_United_S... ("Science policy of the United States")
- Zenul_Abidin 1y agoYeah I see this initiative only bringing in a few US scientists, specifically the more politically-inclined ones.
- surgical_fire 1y ago> You people are too good at critical thinking to read "an investment of 500 million euros between 2025 and 2027" and not instantly write this off as empty grandstanding. Such is life when you can't infinitely print money for being the world reserve currency. When the whole world is buying your debt no questions asked, it's much easier to write some larger checks you know.
- fxtentacle 1y agoI believe the goal of this initiative is not to create a better offer in Europe. It's to remind US scientists that US funding has been axed.
- mpweiher 1y agoThis is not EU R&D budget. This is a small delta, extra funding specifically for attracting US scientists who are looking to move. Comparing this to the total expenditure by the US federal government seems...odd. I asked ChatGPT: "Combining both EU-level and national R&D expenditures, the total R&D spending across the EU in 2023 was approximately €505 billion." But that appears to be total, both government and industry. Spending by national government was apparently around € 123 billion. In addition, the EU spent ~ € 13 billion a year. So a total of € 136 billion in government spending. https://www.eureporter.co/economy/eurostat-economy/2024/08/08/eu-governments-increased-rd-allocations-by-5-in-2023/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.eureporter.co/economy/eurostat-economy/2024/08/0... https://eufunds.me/what-is-the-budget-of-horizon-europe/ https://eufunds.me/what-is-the-budget-of-horizon-europe/
- Epa095 1y agoI salute you for being open about the chatgpt use! Do you really trust what it says? That quoted chatgpt-number has zero value to me. The other numbers are valuable, since they come from actual sources.
- pqtyw 1y agoWhat if the links came from the ChatGPT answer as well?
- mpweiher 1y agoThey did.
- Epa095 1y agoFor me that does not change anything really. I assert the trustworthyness of the webpage as usual. My problem is the statement from chatgpt. I have seen it invent enough bullshit that if it was a person I would have labeled them as untrustworthy a long time ago. Yes yes, it's also amazing and all that jazz, but I still don't know how to trust a 'Chatgpt told me this' - quote.
- pqtyw 1y agoI do get it. However it's hardly any different or less trustworthy than a random person making a random claim identical to what ChatGPT would say. Of course a 'Chatgpt told me this' disclaimer does indicate something, i.e. either that person has no clue about the topic and is unable to verify the answer at least to some extent on their own and is just blindly copy pasting something and/or believes that anything LLMs say is inherently credible on its own without extra verification.
- mpweiher 1y agoGood grief. It's exactly the opposite.
- 1y ago
- geremiiah 1y agoIt's about money and everything else too. US is a really nice country to live in for high skilled individuals. An immigrant nation who speaks the international language, a fast growing economy, especially in cutting edge tech, with overall taxes lower than Europe and even the housing market crisis is not at bad as what you will encounter in many European cities. And its huge so for a lot of emigrants looking for a new home, they will tend towards the country with the huge economy so that when they get their new passport it will be worth something. The only downside of the US was always the immigration system. From a purely financial perspective, a country like Denmark for example, would need to pay more than the US to be as attractive, to account for the fact that it is a tiny country where the main language is not English and where the overall career prospects are more limited.
- yread 1y ago> to be attractive For people who value money over everything else
- geremiiah 1y agoMy post was arguing that the "everything else" is more attractive in the US. Consider a post doc or junior professor who do not know if they will ever get a tenure position or if you even want to remain in academia their whole life. Their plan B is to get an job in industry. Now consider having access to the whole US job market vs. having access to one tiny EU country. Not to mention that when you bias for cutting edge industry R&D there are industries which only have a significant presence in the US.
- JimTheMan 1y agoThey have access to the whole European union? People value not having to step over the homeless to get to work, lower crime, free healthcare, no risk of deportation for having a view on Palestine etc etc The US isn't that pleasant of a place to live.
- 1y ago
- chaosbolt 1y ago100% about everything you said. My cousin studied at Ecole Polytechnique, then did a phd at another top french school and become a professor there. He has 6 articles publishes in the top 3 Math/CS/AI conferences. He was literally paid 45k€ a year, before taxes and other things, that's 2300€ a month after taxes, his rent was 1100€ because it's Paris, now Polytechnique has one of the hardest math/physics entrance exams in the world, and he published more papers and in more prestigious conferences than most of his colleagues. He took a couple months to leetcode then got the fuck out to the US, his salary now is legit an order of magnitude higher than what it was, doesn'r have to think about food, transportation, still gets to do research, etc. I mean you can be as patriotic as you want but when it's that different who's gonna stay here...
- rad_gruchalski 1y agoDid he “fuck out to the US” to work in privately owned businesses, or comparable university job? What prevented your friend to “fuck out” to a private business in the EU?
- demosito666 1y agoWhat difference would it make? Salaried position in EU would pay max 2x that and will end up in higher tax bracket, so net income will increase maybe 1.5x. This is leagues behind US. Europe is only for those high-skilled workers who don’t value money too much.
- const_cast 1y agoThe trouble with comparing income between the US and the EU is that we don't really take into account everything, particularly social or public services. Of which the US has very, very little. In your typical US setup you're going to be paying a lot more of your salary. Suppose no public transit, there goes ~15% of your salary for an automobile. Maybe an extra 5% to healthcare and health insurance, if you're healthy. If you're chronically ill or spontaneously get cancer go ahead and bump that up to 20%. Retirement, another 5% at least. And there's probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting. Point is: it's apples and oranges. It's nice if you're someone who is young, healthy, has no problem commuting two hours a day, etc. As soon as this is no longer true, it becomes a little bit tricky.
- Onavo 1y agoHow does China's compare in absolute terms after adjusting for purchasing power?
- rad_gruchalski 1y agoYeah, but who cares about that higher salary when the risk is that you get a random letter saying “self-deport or who knows maybe we send you to some prison in Ecuador or some other El Salvador”.
- phendrenad2 1y agoScientists are generally smart people and will realize that the number of scientists that get a random letter demanding them to self-deport is zero, and they'll reconsider when it reaches at least one.
- carstenhag 1y agoWhy do you think money is the ultimate motivator? It's proven that after some salary amount, you no longer get (much, if at all) happier. And if US politics is affecting you in a bad way, a salary hit will be totally fine.
- akkad33 1y agoIn the range of peanuts that Europe pays, money is a great motivator! Sometimes it's not much better than minimum wage, like in France
- spwa4 1y agoI guess the question is how close European scientist wages are to "some salary amount", where you no longer have money troubles. I would say that in Europe that's something like 80k euros per year. How much does, say, a starting research assistant get in France? 28,600. To add insult to injury, you get excluded from both of the major social benefits in France: you don't build up pension, you don't get medical coverage (or "you stay on your parents insurance" if you prefer. I'm not sure, but that isn't free for your parents). You are still classified as a student, until you get a professorship (maybe 3% eventually get a professorship). Also, you're excluded from other social services: if you try to claim unemployment or "existence minimum" support, the state will demand you quit research. A lot of "independent" (read: Catholic) universities support researchers from their own money, with free housing or the like, because they have to. Frankly, the Catholic church is STILL a big reason there is serious scientific research in Europe, frankly bigger than state support. To put it bluntly, university wages in Europe need to more than triple (MORE than a 300% raise) before we start talking about "a salary hit" compared to the US. Research in Europe is a job you take to bridge the gap between finishing university and finding a job then abandon when you get a job (like Yann Lecun did. And no he didn't abandon his PhD for his current job, but for a beginner job at Bell Labs). Staying in research when you find an industry job is financial lunacy. Only the job of professor is somewhat decently paid, but perhaps you should visit Silicon Valley: there's plenty of people who quit a postdoc (midway through) to join US industry (for example, Yann Lecun), or even a professorship, like Jürgen Schmidhuber (he's back to professor, he has a reputation for being very hard to work with) What people are saying here is that the investment the EU is making is barely 1% of what is required to fix the situation of scientists in the EU. I think, with this investment (with 10x this investment too btw) the EU brain drain TOWARDS the US will continue, Trump or no Trump. It won't even slow. This is a joke, and these politicians should be ridiculed for making this absurd "gesture". And yes, I'm frustrated about this. A career in research, like so many have in the US, is absolutely impossible unless you're born rich in Europe.
- enaaem 1y agoIt seems that you have stopped reading at that line, because if you have read the whole article the tactic is to pick up scientists whose research just got axed, so you can pick them up at a discount. It's the clever football club tactic of finding players who are unhappy at their current club, but are nonetheless good players.