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> I think the USG spends over $900 Billion every year. Europe spends about 1/10th of that

Do you mean that the EU spends 1/10th that, rather than Europe? Because France, Germany and the UK all spend €100-150bn each in grants depending on how you set your definition, and that’s atop the EU’s grant money.

Just eyeballing the figures across different countries, it looks like the USG distributes approximately the same amount in grants per capita as the EU & UK. Certainly not a 90% diff.

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On a gdp basis, which heavily favours the US, the US is not even the top dog. It's just above Belgium and below South Korea.
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Absolute values would favor the US, not a percent of gdp.
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You're comparing the sum of those European countries to the US.

Scientists have two easy avenues if they are currently in the US, the US or their home country. Immigration to work in a foreign nation is not always easy and takes time.

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> Emigrate where? And why do you assume that the country you're gonna emigrate to will have the funds necessay to fund the research?

If the choice is between $0 in the US and >$0 someplace else, you emigrate to >$0 if you want to continue your research.

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I know scientists who want to move back home but can't because where they are from doesn't have funding for the research they do. Even with the uncertain federal funding it's still more viable than many places around the world.
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I wonder where you suggest researchers go that is both granting funding and not attaching similar or more stringent strings to the money?
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Any country that doesn't openly say that it will bar funding to grant applications that include any word from a given list of words. Which, of the countries on this planet, is quite a few.
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Well, for most "someplace else", the choice is =$0 too.
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You don't think the rest of the world is doing funded research?
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Interestingly, if the US stopped spending you’d need the top 17 remaining countries to double their spending to absorb the American science industry. Doubling is a tall order and seventeen is a large number. Most likely fewer scientists will find employment in government funded academia if this came to be.
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Europe is the obvious answer. As others have posted, your numbers here are way off. And on the flip side, there's now some major programs actively encouraging this with special grants, support, relocation bonuses: e.g. ATRAE in Spain, EURAXESS, "Choose Europe For Science", Max Planck Transatlantic Programme.
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>I think the USG spends over $900 Billion every year. Europe spends about 1/10th of that

Way off, it's way closer, even if we're just talking EU. EU (the body) alone is about 200 billion/year. EU member states are like 1-1.5 trillion/year.

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1/10th?

US: $848B (2024)

EU: $508B (2024)

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UK: $102B (2023)

Switzerland: $22B (2023)

Norway: $8.2B (2024)

OECD "Gross domestic spending on R&D"

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"R&D" is not the same as "grants supporting fundamental science."
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That number is for the United States, not the United States government
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Europe.

We fund science, research and we have accelerated programs for researchers affected by these kinds of things.

If you're interested, email me (see profile). I have been helping Americans emigrate to Europe (for free) for several years.

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I think his main point was that the art of continually licking the right asses to keep funding going is not science.
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Licking asses to get grants has been the full time job of tenured faculty for decades. Peer review just means they lick each other’s asses.
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> USG spends over $900 Billion every year

If you spend $900 Billions on BS you will lose to other countries that only spend 1/100th of that.

Quantity over quality doesn’t work in science because reality doesn’t care who paid how much.

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the US used to spend. Now borligarchs decide.
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Does the US spend that much anymore? How much are you willing to compromise the integrity of your research to get your slice of what’s left?
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