1. What it shows: Students good enough to get accepted into PhD programs are good enough to get paid more in general. Good we're talking about this -- the market clearly values these people!
2. What it misses: ... But what if a PhD-capable person instead just went directly into industry? What is the opportunity cost of taking a pause of 4-7 years to do R&D for the public?
3. What economists found: By looking at students graduating from a good school and therefore PhD-capable, and then comparing the result of them doing 4-7 years of PhD vs not.. the students who took time to contribute to science lost out on a ton of money. They're quite literally donating their time to society.
Phrasing it as _subsidizing_ these people to do R&D is misleading. The reality is the government is underpaying for the public service of growing the economy, especially relative to market rates for people equally qualified to make a bunch of $$$ working on social media ads and fancy juice machines.
But that breaks the narrative. The actual studies show the salary sweet spot is somewhere between a BS and MS. That means federal institutions must _lure_ PhDs, not drive them away.
This sort of uncharitable swiping breaks the HN guidelines. So do insinuations of astroturfing, which you did elsewhere in this thread. I realize it can be hard to restrain oneself when someone else is wrong on the internet, but please make the effort and edit such acid out of your comments if you want to keep posting here. You can always set 'delay' in your profile to give yourself time to edit before others see your comment; that's what I do.