'Never seen anything like this' – NIH meetings and travel halted abruptly
nature.com
nature.com
Of course it works. Every young couple considers the deal.
I really with hen would be more distrustful
Even if grants were resumed tomorrow, the fact they ever paused, at all, for capricious political reasons, means there isn’t good job security, even if the salary is good.
I don't know what the salaries are in Bio, but with regards to developer salaries you can live a very comfortable life on a "low" European developer salary (excluding perhaps a few countries with deeper structural problems such as Portugal).
European academia is usually constrained by the lack of funding and permanent positions. Many European researchers end up in the US, because it's easier to find a job there. Partly because it's a big country and the right kind of opportunities are more likely available at the right time. Partly because American researchers are more likely to end up in the industry, because the salary gap is higher. And partly because the American immigration system makes it easier for foreigners to get an academic job than an industry job.
But we also like to joke that we are in the US, because we are not good enough to get a job at home.
She passed.
Have you seen European life expectancy?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
Have you seen European maternal mortality rates?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_maternal_...
Have you seen European vacation days?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...
Have you seen European happiness ranking?
Which is frustrating to read because I don't think their pricing model makes any sense either.
Anyone doing medical research can easily make more money as a clinician in private practice. If we force these people out, it’s the taxpayers loss. Unless you believe medical research as a whole is a waste of money, which… I would disagree on. If it’s simply a matter of changing research priorities, there are already mechanisms to influence that without shutting down the whole system. This is just ham-handed incompetence as a show of force.
A lot of people are reliant on this aid. A lot of people are going to die within weeks.
Feel sorry for the young PIs and postdocs.
If you're trying to thin down agencies to reduce costs so the government can significantly reverse or slow its financial trends to buy more time, shaking things a little and seeing who complains could certainly get quick feedback about what to prioritize or what to cut.
If your job is so unimportant that you aren't willing to reach out and make a case to the relevant people for why it is important, maybe the mission won't be deemed strong enough to justify spending tax payer dollars on.
For work that does produce actual value, assistance could be provided in converting that mission to a private company if the entities that depended on it existing will realistically pay for its services. If it's important and nobody would pay, maybe keep or test viability for converting to a non-profit organization that relies on donations. If it's both unimportant and nobody would pay, probably cut.
Existing employees working on it can then be given time/finances to help deal with any transition deemed necessary.
The existing government URLs or resources for it could then redirect to the privatized group, which can carry on its legacy.
It wouldn't surprise me if we see some more agencies facing various kinds of disruption just to see who gets noisy to gather data.
It's worth keeping in mind that government shutdowns are probably far more disruptive and have lasted from 16-35 days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_Un...
"If you don't complain, maybe your job is not important". "If you complain, your job is important".
Do these takes sound reasonable to you?
> For work that does produce actual value, assistance could be provided in converting that mission to a private company if the entities that depended on it existing will realistically pay for its services.
If the solution is to privatize anything that produces value (and I think we can agree that cancer research does produce value), why do we need the government again? That scenario doesn't even sound realistic as it assumes the transition would be done seamlessly, but that can't happen when the existing entity is shut down abruptly.
I think it's blatantly obvious that removing funding from NIH is a negative thing for regular people (not only for Americans), but naive people still try to spin actions like this as something that is being done in their best interest. Please think instead in terms of "how can benefit the people that made the decision", and you'll soon find the real reason why it's being done.
The solution would not be to privatize anything that produces value, the solution would be to assess whether privatization would be a good fit for some of the things that do have value, but don't strictly need to be run by the government.
I'm not assuming anything seamless, but the process would occur before something gets shut down, not after. I didn't get the impression from the article that anything was totally shut down, just some kinds of activities were paused? I'm not really responding specifically to this, so much as just the general critical need to reduce costs.
That said, cutting government costs and people's dependencies on the government down to within a reasonable threshold is in people's best interest.
In China and Russia, so many people work for the government. Keeping people not just employed, but ideologically on the side of the status quo of the government can get out of control. It's convenient in some ways, because you can just create jobs out of thin air if the job market is struggling.
The best interest of the people is definitely not infinite government growth.
Government spends a lot of money too. Spending some money can be in the interests of the people. Spending too much money can flip over to not being in their interest. Spending too much can reduce both the value and the trust (necessarily linked) in the US Dollar, slowly weakening our economic leverage for doing things on behalf of US citizens and our allies.
So just spending infinitely like there's no cost to creating money is also not in people's best interest.
Some projects could fail, some things that were valuable might fall apart, I don't know. Ideally it's done with some finesse and important things are either kept or found a new home. But the logic of compassion significantly favors cutting government spending and government dependency when it gets past some threshold.
And this is just observing from very far, with the tiniest inconveniences like people not being given tickets for state parks etc.pp.
We had a thing with the Belgian government 10 years ago and basically everyone in another country was scratching their head.
I'm not hinting at everything being perfect here but you seem to be forgetting that governments should work for the people, not against them.
A lot of people don't necessarily want us spending a lot on military and defense, but we need to. By spending on it, we maintain the private industries even in times of relative peace so that when we do need them they're still there and we don't have to build them up from scratch again. It also becomes an expected necessary cost, so any other initiatives we try to fund have to contend with that part of the budget already being spent. This way we don't accidentally tie up what used to be military funding in all kinds of other programs so that not only do you have to rebuild production, but you have to sort out the financial problems too.
Governments make all kinds of decisions based on calculations from analysts, politicians, geopoliticians and so on. What people want is a factor, but not necessarily the most important one.
With our government shutdowns, congress and the president both have to agree on where to appropriate funds and how much funding to appropriate for the government. This funding has to occur, because there are critical programs that everyone agrees on, so there's actual pressure to get it passed. At the same time, there are other things that different representatives want to get funded or programs they disagree about and they'll leverage the pressure to appropriate funds before a shutdown or to shorten a shutdown in order to squeeze out decisions that are normally delayed/ignored.
That said, there is a critical culture in the US around hassling the government and not treating it as your friend. The government may work for you, but it is not your friend. Governments are bears. Do not feed the bears. Respect them, accepting their co-existence and the value they offer in an ecosystem, sure. Just don't train the bears to come to you when they're hungry, because some day you'll find that it's not a good idea to have a hungry bear in front of you.
Even though this is historically true and deeply wise, people find themselves steadily expanding the government despite the government being in debt. We also get people in congress that will vote no on almost anything, because they believe in small government with limited power and are concerned every time it expands.
So the shutdowns kind of happen as they haggle over these kinds of issues.
Wouldn’t management know that already
when is fear ever a good workplace strategy?
Anyway, he's kicking over sand castles. Not because it's going to improve anything, but because he can. Purest expression of power. The cruelty is the point. Etc.
It's wild the number of people who think this behavior a good thing...
This includes actions taken by a previous government: generally successive governments fulfil the obligations of the previous ones, even those it disagrees with. That's the only way you can run a reasonable long-term stable and reliable government.
Of course a new government can change things, but this is often a long process which also includes meeting previous obligations.
[1]: Or maybe it does, I don't know. I wouldn't assume anything from the person trying to abolish citizenship birthright in a way that's clearly and obviously unconstitutional.
The article says the move is part of a roughly 11 day pause in communication (till the first of Feb) but also describes the reviews as "suspended indefinitely"
or rather, for the reason of speedrunning 1990s Russian oligarchic plundering of the state