The PhD Bubble is a fucking crime. As you noted, it's a pyramid scheme. There used to be BA-level research positions, to get your feet wet in industrial resear

The PhD Bubble is a fucking crime. As you noted, it's a pyramid scheme. There used to be BA-level research positions, to get your feet wet in industrial research for a couple years, and possibly to help one get into a PhD program on advantageous terms. The problem is that those BA-level research positions, while they still exist, are now all fucking filled with PhDs. The public sector (politicians more than bureaucrats) is short-sighted and the private-sector is worse. Basic research has been shuttered, and I think that's largely because of the anti-intellectual culture of the US. Basic research is seen as something "eggheads" do, and the mainstream distrusts people like us for, you know, believing the universe is 13.7 billion years old based on science rather than 6,000 years old based on a book. Notably, most of these investments occurred during wartime. It appears that government support of scientific research surges during war, and declines in peace. This is a paradox that needs to be resolved in order to make better use of the nation's intellectual resources. This is sad, but accurate. Average people respond more to the carrot than the stick, but the sorts of people who tend to acquire power respond more strongly to the stick, and only an existential and violent threat can bring them to do the right thing. Societies seem to degrade until war of some kind (international, or an internal revolution) is inevitable. War is the worst way of resolving those building-up tensions and corruption, but no one has come up with anything that works better. We're about 25 years away from a violent revolution due to internal inequality in the U.S. and, while I'd love to see a reversal of course that avoids bloodshed, I feel like the odds are against it. We just suck as a species.