In all important areas such as clean energy, fusion energy, biotechnology and AI the Chinese government is heavily investing in and pushing Chinese companies to lead the world.<p>China Is Outspending the U.S. to Achieve the ‘Holy Grail’ of Clean Energy: Fusion
See: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/climate/china-us-fusion-energy.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/climate/china-us-fusion-e...</a><p>America's lead in biotechnology is slipping, while China has made synthetic biology a national priority. In the iGEM international competition, only one American school finished in top 10, seven were from China. See: <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teens-may-have-come-up-with-new-way-to-detect-treat-lyme-disease-60-minutes-transcript/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teens-may-have-come-up-with-new...</a> Or watch video: <a href="https://youtu.be/VEj5I4CBbgU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/VEj5I4CBbgU</a>
But related to this article, is China winning in terms of accumulating talent?<p>I don’t think people all over Europe/Asia/Africa migrate to China.<p>If they succeed, it’s purely with their own talent. The US still has that advantage even if it has less of it, unless I am mistaken.
Chinese is too difficult of a language.<p>I have spent 5 years learning it part-time and have gotten to a level I can understand 30% of a TV show and 20% of a newspaper.<p>Unfortunately it's two different languages and both are unlike almost anywhere else. The spoken language is tonal and the consonants don't easily match English. If I have a heavy English accent, I just don't speak Chinese instead of sounding like a foreigner. And having to <i>memorize</i> the tones is brutal.<p>Meanwhile the written language has almost no correlation with the spoken language. You're just drawing a bunch of symbols on a paper in geometrical arrangements. Which is beautiful but difficult if you're used to being able to spell words based on how they sound.<p>Unless, of course, you're typing on a computer. In that case you must type the latinised spelling of the characters <i>without</i> tones, then scroll through all the homonyms that match the spelling. Which is still extremely difficult because the consonants don't match Latin languages. And you must still learn the characters to know which one to pick.<p>Once you get through that, every sentence structure is different as well. Instead of "whose book is this", you say 这本书是谁的 which is like saying "this book is his" but you replace "his/他" with a generic word who/谁 representing that you want to know the person the pronoun was referring to. I can even write 这个什么是谁的 where I have replaced the word "book/书" with "what/什么", meaning I am simultaneously asking what the object is and who it belongs to.<p>You can effectively do this with any sentence or object. It's a much better designed language since sentences don't magically change the order of everything but it means I cannot think words in English and translate them piecemeal to Chinese. I have to know the whole sentence immediately.<p>Of course, once you learn this, you have to learn the Chinese idioms. And then everything gets worse because there's so many homonyms everything's a pun, which is why I'm stuck. According to Deepseek, 这个什么是谁的 actually means "what is this thing" and you don't care what the thing is, so it's not really the question. You have to reorder it and ask 这是谁的什么 which glosses as "this is whose what" which is a compound question that's grammatically impossible.<p>Also, I'd be taking a 50% paycut. Otherwise I'd do it anyways.
100% agree even as someone who grew up around people speaking mandarin. I still cannot write despite having taken the language in both GCSEs and IB, while also living in the country for 3+ years.<p>i can speak the language just enough to get by but once you get into technical terms, i'm once again completely lost. Unless they do a Singapore or Dubai and make business in English, i dont see any chance of them attracting talent
I have worked in with the Chinese now for two years in technical fields. I have a strict requirement that they learn English as it is a more technical and specific language and less prone to the use of metaphorical weasel words that slow progress.<p>I have openly stated that it is a strictly less technical language and often draws teams in to vague specifications and much more verbose language to find specificity. I have billions of dollars in progress to back that up.<p>There is a lot about Chinese and American culture that will surprise you when the rubber meets the road.
China is trying. Around the time the US announced restrictions on the H-1B visa, China announced the K visa for attracting immigrants [1].<p>At this point in time, I don't think people are lining up to get K visa to go live in China. But if the current trajectory continues in the US, who knows how things will be in 5 years?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-entry-exit-k-visa-rules-2025/" rel="nofollow">https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-entry-exit-k-visa...</a>
China has a global reputational problem that will take decades to fix.<p>The US has a global reputational advantage that will take decades to fall behind China, regardless of what any US administration does.<p>Nobody sane is going to believe rhetoric claiming that the US is somehow worse than a country that keeps 1.5 million people in concentration camps, and where people work 70 hours per week, no matter how many times Reddit tells them so.
This reads like vague posturing instead of accepting (or even just looking at...) the reality on the ground.<p>I have about a dozen friends spread across 8 different mid-to-high level universities around the country in biomed. Europe and Canada are definitely a preference but China is entering conversation and has been for the last few years.<p>The alternative is to abandon an entire career or field of interest because the funding is held up by irrational national political policy.
> The US has a global reputational advantage that will take decades to fall behind China<p>I don't think this is the case at all.
> The US has a global reputational advantage that will take decades to fall behind China, regardless of what any US administration does.<p>As a former academic at a top US university, no, the US no longer has that strong reputation. 10 years ago, if you were someone, you wanted to come to the US. The best students in the world came and stayed.<p>Things are radically different now. Much of the best talent no longer comes and when they do come they leave. It's night and day.<p>It's not a binary choice. It's not the US or China. It's the US or Canada/EU/etc. And if you're from China, you used to stay, now you leave.<p>This isn't reddit. I saw this first hand.
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> If they succeed, it’s purely with their own talent.<p>I wouldn't go that far, Chinese espionage is a very real thing, with industry secrets being some of the top targets.
The importance of immigrant “talent” is clearly overstated. Japan became a powerhouse in the 20th century with virtually no immigration and a significantly smaller population than the US. China is becoming a technological powerhouse with no immigration as well.
Well, China has a tremendous pool of people to pull talent from. Do they need immigrants? Or just continue the path of “building it in-house”?
China’s pool is smaller than it seems. China has pursued a development trajectory that focuses on the leading provinces first. That is reasonable. Better to get Beijing and a few other key places to the leading edge first, instead of trying to incrementally move all 1.4 billion people together at the same pace.<p>But the flip side of that is that China’s talent pool is a lot smaller, in practice, than 1.4 billion. Because vast swaths of the country are still basically the third world. Tellingly, China does not participate in the international PISA assessment across the whole country: <a href="https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/are-chinas-students-really-number-one" rel="nofollow">https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/are-chinas-students-re...</a>. It released scores for four wealthy provinces back in 2018. They were very high, but there’s obviously a reason China doesn’t test and publish scores for the whole country.
If the U.S. is losing talent to anywhere else in the world isn’t it losing a relative advantage or increasing a relative disadvantage with China, even if China is not the one benefiting from the lost talent?
> I don’t think people all over Europe/Asia/Africa migrate to China.<p>Learning mandarin is the major blocker imo, more people would move if the language was easier.
Mandarin is weird, because I don't think it's that hard to speak at a passable level, mostly because the grammar is so simple. Many people are spooked by tones, but I think their importance for simple communication can be a little overstated.<p>But then, learning to read and write requires enormous additional effort. When I learned in Beijing, I'd spend a couple hours a day working on grammar/speaking/listening - and then like 6 hours a day of rote practice to get familiar with characters.
They're to migrating to America any more either, that's the point. So no, the US has no advantage, on current trajectory it'll increasingly only have 'native' talent and some of that may choose to move elsewhere.
I think we can all look forward to China leading the world in 100 years, and Chinese being the dominant language. They're making all the right moves, while western and other democratic nations are just increasing their xenophobia and electing far-right-wing leaders, and doubling down on stupid policies while refusing to invest sufficiently in future technologies.<p>Of course, the US epitomizes the stupidity, but we don't see the EU for instance picking up the slack much. If they were smart, they'd be doing everything they can to take advantage of a brain drain from the US to their own countries, but they aren't (but China is).
This comment seems crazy to me.<p>Chinas political stance more closely resembles right-wing policies than left leaning ones.<p>All the xenophobic notions you are talking about china has in spades.<p>I am not saying China is not doing things right here will lead to your described outcome, what I am saying you conflation with western politics is completely out of this world, and is a excellent example of why the outcome you describe may be a reality for China.
German universities are now telling any US researcher who looses their funding that they will be funded at a Germany university and get help with their visa application.
> German universities are now telling any US researcher who looses their funding that they will be funded at a Germany university<p>Is this true? Is there a link to the policy? Anything is possible, but this sounds fishy. German research funding isn't known for either generosity or particularly wide reach.
Depends on if the Chinese can get over foreigners messing up the tones all the time.<p>English has the advantage that it already had a lot of different ways of pronouncing it before becoming the world language, so the expectations for how perfect people's pronunciation should be was lower.
That’s just not true though. Sure English doesn’t have tones, but there are other tricky parts of the language. Additionally, Russian is another “difficult” language, but all the satellite nations had no problem picking it up.<p>The real reason people learn English isn’t because it’s easy. It’s because they need to. As someone who is married to an immigrant, it’s not easy for them. They’ve just worked <i>really</i> hard over decades.<p>Americans will do fine learning Chinese if it ever becomes an economic necessity.
Your comment makes no sense. I think it’s pretty safe to say that China has higher technological momentum than the U.S., and the U.S. has higher technological momentum than the EU. But that’s also the same ordering for xenophobia and far-right leadership: <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033687586/china-ban-effeminate-men-tv-official-morality" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033687586/china-ban-effemina...</a>. China clearly is the most xenophobic and right wing, followed by the U.S., followed by the EU.
It is kind of crazy that a lot of those moves that are so massively successful is a social media and other actions to specifically destabilize the US. And it was only possible to do BECAUSE we're so open. In China you can't get past the firewall and you can't migrate there without being on watch lists and very easily removed in a way that would make ICE look like an Ice Cream parlor.
>"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired."<p>----------------<p>Scientists go where science is funded. A large proportion of U.S. scientists are also immigrants, who will tend to go where immigrants are welcomed.
Meanwhile, China has "genius camps" for young people, to skim off the cream of the cream of the crop, so they can go on to do amazing things for their country. It blows my mind what we've done in the last year, to damage our ability to compete on the world stage.
It bears repeating: for everyone who insists that the US Executive Branch <i>isn't</i> compromised by our enemies, what different actions would someone who <i>was</i> compromised and trying to speedrun the destruction of American power, influence, and hegemony have taken?
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> seem evil for enforcing immigration law<p>When people living otherwise-blameless lives begin getting accosted, beaten, or killed on <i>suspicion</i> of the legal equivalent of <i>unpaid parking tickets</i>, then yes, the new enforcement occurring is indeed "evil."<p>When they start willfully breaking all sorts of other major laws and violating court-orders to enforce the minor law, yes, that's usually evil.<p>When rationales last-used to jail innocent Japanese-Americans into US "internment" camps during World War II are being resurrected to declare entire nationalities as foreign invaders, yes, that sure looks a lot like the evil it was before.<p>When people are being snatched off the streets and then shuffled constantly between prisons purely so that <i>their own lawyers cannot find them</i> to challenge their detention, that is evil.<p>When you're not just <i>normally</i> deporting people under US law, but start sending them--without trial or even charges--to <i>rot for the rest of their lives in an El Salvador torture-prison run by a paid dictator accomplice</i>, YES, that's f***ing evil!<p>____<p>I could continue, but I won't, because those should be ample examples for normal Americans who've had over a year to watch all these well-documented things happen... and there is no amount will be enough for someone that secretly <i>likes</i> the evil when it happens to others.
I think you might be finding a certain category of apologist over-represented here.<p>Still, I appreciate you making the effort to engage in Good Faith!
Go try the same in a non-Western country and report the comparative experience.<p>Histrionics over normal law enforcement that is tame and well-regulated by global standards is embarrassing — it makes Americans look uneducated and childish.
All of your claims are manifestly dishonest. If you don't have anything to say in good faith, don't say anything at all.
I would argue that wherever you're getting your news from is lying by omission and you have no idea what's actually happening out there.<p>Alternatively, you're engaging in willful ignorance.<p>Yes, it's reasonable to want to enforce immigration laws, but ICE has been engaging in outright criminal behavior. Arresting and imprisoning US citizens, denying due process, then ignoring court orders to release them.<p>Meanwhile, ICE and DHS are lying constantly on their social media pages.
You first, buddy.
Who said anything about immigration?<p>Let's start with abandoning science funding, abandoning investments in and tax credits for renewable energy sources that are the future. Then there's applying political pressure to academic institutions to drive even more researchers away, abandoning the civil service and science/reason-based governance. Move over to the medical sector and put a dangerous anti-science nut in charge, kill off funding and research.<p>You pull out of international organizations, trade deals, and treaties. You throw temper tantrums and tariffs around, flip flopping day to day and making it impossible to predict the costs of doing business. You antagonize the rest of the world and give them a constant stream of reasons to stop doing business with you, leaving you isolated, weaker, and poorer.<p>Then, sure, let's go briefly to immigration. America has been great because it has been where all the smartest people want to be. Our political and academic environment caused the smartest people around the world to want to be here, and the US benefited massively from their contributions and inventions.<p>So you build a culture demonizing anyone not a specific shade of white. You destroy visa programs. You send thugs to universities to harass people and make them unwelcome. You tell students and researchers who went home to see family that they can't come back to the US. Then you send thugs into cities to terrorize and murder people. So you give all those brilliant scientists even more reason to leave the US, take their contributions with them, and never return.<p>That's how you kill America.
Other comparable countries also having roving gangs of secret immigration police that are unbound by the law and the only departments responsible for overseeing them are managed by the same boss that controls them?
The majority of Americans support immigration enforcement, the majority does not support how it's being done. Enforcement of the law is not the evil you see people being upset about.
In no stretch of the imagination does this even answer the question. I get that you wanted to make a political point, but this is remarkably weak.
Idk, I think a much more effective way to destroy the US would be to send armed gangs through the streets and have them kidnap people from their houses at random.<p>That would cause far more destruction than merely telling people you were doing that without actually doing it.
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Its calling for the US to stop copying the bad parts of Chinese Policy and go back to matching the good parts.
Don't be an ass. Someone can be an ethically bad person and still do things that you can learn and benefit from. Moreover, saying China is doing good at research does not somehow mean you support their government.
The US government is now more authoritarian than the Chinese government. Half of what you've been told is propaganda, like the "social credit score" story.<p>In China they put people to death for corruption, here they just get a well-paid lobbying job.
Speaking as an American with some personal history in Hong Kong (on both sides of the PRC handover), saying "is now" is not accurate.<p>That said, I would agree to "may soon become if we don't stop it." We aren't there yet, but we're on a bad trajectory.
> The US government is now more authoritarian than the Chinese government<p>Nah we’re not playing this game.<p>Try asking the CCP officials in person about Uyghur internment camps, or Tiananmen Square, and see if your family isn’t all arrested.<p>Ask Olympian Alysa Liu how the CCP targeted her father to try to coerce her to skate for China.
they shot unarmed protestors in US streets.
Oh but this game is fun! I see your Uyghurs and raise the Falun Gong. A religious cult that is against pretty much anything liberal, but because they are a thorn in China's side they get US support and are oh-so-persecuted. They even have an anti-Communist acrobatics show called Shen Yun. Yes, that one, the one that spams your mailbox with flyers, and abuses kids.
I think the next 3 or so years in the US are going to be a real awakening for you, if the last year hasn't. It's going to become more and more difficult to shove your head deeper into the sand.
I mean, they're both authoritarian right now. But at least one of them doesn't think science is woke. So....
if you actually think China would even entertain the idea of funding some of the scientific research conducted in the US over the past few decades, you have a fantasy view of what is going on outside the US. That political controversy wouldn't even arise because it's such a nonstarter that it could never even become a controversy.
Past being the key point. Because, right now it's all Dumpty all the time, until we boot his weak tools and fools November. I'm confident we are stronger than that two bit corrupt fraud, and will get back to where science funding is a priority. Hopefully our state of affairs is much more temporary than what China is subjected to. But there's absolutely no question whether the dunce parade in the US is anti science.
Did you miss Trump's plan to censor the internet except for party approved propaganda? It was on the front page here a few days ago. The propaganda site will be called freedom.gov.
have you seen our school systems, k12. Its terrible and in dire need of a revamp. No child left behind really screwed kids over that want to learn. We cant just let kids pass because of feelings. Made schools better, have alternative paths for kids that are not excelling like some of their peers and find school hard to sit through.
It's really not about this - it's that for decades we've been able to draw top global talent to the US. We've cut research funding so heavy that we can't even support post docs who are American citizens now. My friends are going to Europe, Canada, Hong Kong.
Don’t forget campaigning to remove standardized testing from admissions processes even leading to UCSD having to create remedial math classes for their engineering students.
> No child left behind really screwed kids over that want to learn. We cant just let kids pass because of feelings<p>The whole point of no child left behind was to actually measure student performance instead of relying on feelings: <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-child-left-behind-worked/" rel="nofollow">https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-child-left-behind-wo...</a><p>If you try to disaggregate the effects of e.g. immigration, you can see that American education is actually good: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/18bzkle/2022_pisa_scores_by_country_and_us_racial_group/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/18bzkle/2022_pi...</a>.<p>White students in the U.S. do comparably to students in Korea in the international PISA test, and better than students from western europe (excluding the immigrants in those countries).<p>You have to compare like with like. A huge fraction of American kids grow up to parents who are not native speakers of English. That’s not true in Japan or Korea.
Not everything is about money. The killer app of the US used to be that the US was rich <i>and</i> welcoming to foreigners <i>and</i> politically quite free.<p>China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at least some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep their mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader.<p>Their cultural insularity does not help either. You can live in China, but you will never be accepted as Chinese. The US was quite unique (together with Canada, Australia etc.) that it was able and willing to accept you as an American even with a funny accent, as long as you wanted to be one.
Just to add one more point that makes the US attractive to global talent: citizenship. In particular: 1) citizenship at birth and 2) viable path to citizenship via green card.<p>Of course, both of these are in the crosshairs for “revision”.
> The US was quite unique<p>Well, based on the current admin and supporters, only part of the US was unique
That has always been true, and for everywhere. However very few countries are anywhere near as accepting for foreigners as the US as a whole despite the many who are not. Canada is just as accepting from what I can tell - I don't know enough about Australia to know. Most other countries are far worse - though many will not admit it just how bad their country is.
That is a trivial observation. A nation of such size can hardly be a hive mind with totally homogeneous politics.
You’re right best reserve such observations for small nations like China
Yet China is 3 times as big and you are quite comfortable treating it this way
Yeah. And? So?<p>When the part of the country that was less unique took power, they immediately did what everyone else that was not unique did and became unwelcoming of foreigners.<p>I guess to you other countries that the US is becoming more like would also not be of a hive mind by having people that are welcoming of foreigners. Where's your hive mind comment about that part of the original comment?
Well, perhaps it is time for large, ethnically-homogenous countries that are on the ascent to adopt diversity policies of the sort that the US was approaching before the "vibe shift"
I don’t think diversity policies are what made America diverse.
Canada is largely still homogeneous but still welcoming to immigrants and very close to the US. Rather than China totally changing cultures, I think it’s more likely that US-based companies will have large satellite offices in middle powers.
I'm Canadian and unless you're talking about the middle of Saskatchewan I don't know what you mean - no city over a hundred thousand here is homogenous.
I have been in small towns in the Maritimes where people looked shocked to see an Indian immigrant with me, probably for the first time ever. I meant more in relation to the US, though, which is a much more diverse country.
Canada is not ethnically or culturally homogeneous at all.
Data at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada</a>
Canada is 70% white where the US is close to 50%. That 20% puts them far above the majority line though. Not at all homogeneous, just much more so than the US.
White is a color, not a culture. Quebec and Newfoundland are very different than Alberta and Saskatchewan.
"White" is not one ethnicity or culture -- a lot of that 70% are French-speaking Quebeckers who surely cannot be considered part of a homogeneous mass with Anglo-Canadians.
Are you suggesting that anyone who lives and works here in the US can be accepted as “American”?<p>Are you also implying that in the US anyone is free to speak negatively of “dear leader”?<p>There are a multitude of current examples to the contrary.
The comment used the past tense in every sentence
<i>> Are you suggesting that anyone who lives and works here in the US can be accepted as “American”?</i><p>Whether you're born in Moscow and named Sergey Mikhailovich Brin, or born in Pretoria and named Elon Reeve Musk, or born in Hyderabad and named Satya Narayana Nadella, born in Frankfurt and named Peter Andreas Thiel - America has a place for you. Maybe even your own government department.<p>In America a man can find acceptance regardless of the circumstances of his birth, and irrespective of race, creed and colour, so long as he has a billion dollars.
Born here.<p>And yeah, used to. Past tense.<p>Not any more with der fuhrer.
> used to be
> There are a multitude of current examples to the contrary.<p>I see negative opinions of government officials constantly.<p>It's basically all I see whenever I have the misfortune of turning on the TV.
> China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at least some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep their mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader.<p>I mean we are literally putting people in concentration camps right now. Kinda hard to take the moral high ground at the moment. Scientists are fleeing the United States for their safety, just like they did from 1930s Germany.
Are you talking about the detention centers for immigrants?<p>And then comparing that to genocidal camps for Germans and conquered subjects?<p>Just making sure I'm reading this correctly here.
"Concentration camp” is a term that predates its (somewhat euphemistic, when done in retrospect) use for the camps eventually used in the extermnation campaign by the Nazis (which also started out as concentration camps, in the more usual sense, as part of what was nominally a deportation program.)<p>Though concentration camps are almost always part of systematic, ethnically-targetted abuse, even when they aren't part of genocide campaigns.
Yes. For example, the U.S. also had ethnically-based "concentration camps" (but not extermination camps) during WWII.<p>But these are not like the concentration camps of the 1940s.<p>"Detention camps" are a more accurate descriptor -- both technically and connotatively -- when they are holding foreign nationals prior to repatriation.
The Germans ran work camps, concentration camps, and death camps. Right now the United States is only running two of the three. We have work camps (prisons) and concentration camps (detention facilities).
It is abhorrent, that these days, just because it serves one’s domestic political narrative, one is willing to paint the victims of state-organized industrial killings as mere illegal border crossers. The Nazi’s victims were German citizens, not illegal migrants.
I’m not sure who told you that the Nazis only killed German citizens, considering that they famously invaded Poland (a sovereign nation at the time) and started executing Jews there.<p>I also don’t know who told you that they’re only putting illegal migrants in Alligator Alcatraz. It’s not hard to find examples of people who had legal visas being rounded up because of the Trump administration’s idiotic quota policy.
Don't get it twisted. While what is happening is not right, explain to me what happens when there is criticism of China from within China on their treatment of Uyghurs.
America is hostile to science and technology. I'm not sure how anyone with a functional desire to improve humanity decides "Hey, those americans, they sure do deserve better vaccines."
> I'm not sure how anyone with a functional desire to improve humanity decides "Hey, those americans, they sure do deserve better vaccines."<p>Because people understand that people don't get to choose their government or culture and that everyone deserves better healthcare. Every child who is at risk from the rise of anti-vax 100% deserves better vaccines and ought to bear 0% responsibility for what the adults do.
> Not everything is about money.<p>It is when researchers can't make enough money to eat and live, which is an actual reality in the US right now.<p>Researchers at top institutions often make less than Uber drivers.<p>There are other countries where you can live on less and the government isn't dipping their hands into your pockets every 5 seconds.
> The killer app of the US used to be that the US was rich and welcoming to foreigners and politically quite free.<p>Yeah, it used to be the that the US only committed ethnic cleansing against people that were here <i>first</i>, not foreigners, and was so welcoming to foreigners that it would expend resources to have them shipped here as property.
They sound like very loyal people who I would love to have as my compatriots.
Many of the world's most intelligent and caring people are loyal to values over tribe.
they can't be your compatriots if you imprison them, nor if they've to death due to working without any funding, also know as "pay"
Loyalty is earned. They don't owe me or you any loyalty if we mistreat them.
> Scientists go where science is funded.<p>DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic pay quite well for research and have better "labs" than most places on Earth. I don't believe they're struggling to hire either.<p>This article is using a relatively outdated definition, functionally speaking, of "research institute".<p>Traditional research institutions, especially academia, have been declining for decades and current funding problems are just another one of many problems thrown into the mix.<p>I remember well a world where most serious research happened in universities and was publicly funded. I personally think that was a better world, but that is not the world we live in today and I don't see us going back. Even China's most impressive research is not coming from publicly controlled research institutes or universities but from VCs and large corporations.<p>To be fair, the time of open public science was a relatively brief in it's long history.
USA is still one of the top countries for scientists. Just as an example Europe had a few years of exporting the best GLP-1 drugs (finally something in which Europe was leader in science), Eli Lily quickly took it over.<p>In software San Francisco is still the top for AI research: even when Peter Steinberger didn't know what he will do with OpenClaw, it was clear to him that the only place to move to was USA.<p>Terrence Tao was a good example of what happens when an exceptionally smart person stops getting funded by an American University: not moving to another country, but got VC money and created a new company.<p>USA politics is looked at so closely, because it matters and changes and still more democratic than most countries in the world even though democracy is a mess (as it's supposed to be).
> Just as an example Europe had a few years of exporting the best GLP-1 drugs (finally something in which Europe was leader in science), Eli Lily quickly took it over<p>You make it sound like Europe was not a leader in any area of science until this one thing which they led in for a few years.<p>> Terrence Tao was a good example of what happens when an exceptionally smart person stops getting funded by an American University: not moving to another country, but got VC money and created a new company<p>No, he's an example of what can happen when a Fields medalist gets funding cut. 99% of exceptionally smart university mathematicians and scientists will not be able to get VC money.<p>With the US both cutting research funding and becoming unfriendly to foreign students many future Tao's that would have chosen a US school for grad school will likely look elsewhere.
I fled SF and I know a bunch of similar people. Startups are still founded there for the address, not the local talent pool. The address is there because of inertia, not because of inherent advantage. If I were to create a startup I wouldn't even consider doing it in SF now. It is a waste of money that could be put towards the idea. The US is clearly on an ant-intellectual path. People default to here because of inertia but every attack on immigrants, every high level decision based on quack science and personal gain and every attack on our institutions supporting the development of the next generation is putting inertia elsewhere. It is clear as day that the US is only keeping any kind of advantage right now due to inertia and threat and not innovation and effort.
>In software San Francisco is still the top for AI research<p>What was the last thing that a major US Lab published? It's all trade secrets.<p>Chinese labs are the only ones publishing results as they happen.<p>The US is in the position it was for semiconductor manufacturing, first it was labs and open science. Then by the 80s fabs started costing millions and universities stopped being able to contribute and nothing got published.<p>Now it's getting to trillions and if Intel goes under there is no one in the US who knows how to make any semiconductor generation newer than 2010.
I find the Peter mention funny because some of the other reasons he said it made sense to move to SF were that labor laws in Europe wouldn’t allow him to work 6-7 days a week, and he’d have to focus more on safety/responsibility in mind in Europe.<p>He’s moving from London after all, arguably the global AI research hub.<p>(Also likely SA told him the offer was contingent on him relocating)
I have never had problem working (and seeing other people work) 6-7 days a week in reality in Europe (even if it was unofficial).<p>But capital structures and politicians are still too close to old European companies from the second world war and don't allow venture capital to florish.<p>It's easier to earn money by winning a fake EU tender and giving back half of the money to a politician than doing something innovative.
Nobody would stop him from working 6-7 days a week. Only for forcing his employees to do this involuntarily for him.
There are no work police in Europe who go round every workplace to make you log your hours working and arrest you if it's over 40.
This is a lagging indicator, it is still one of the top no question, but the point is that is shifting materially.
I'm not sure how making a copycat "me-too" drug, after one was successfully developed shows how innovative a country or company is?
Terrence Tao expressed sentiments are at odds with you and which align with the article:<p>> The U.S. used to be sort of the default, the no brainer, option. If you got an offer from a top U.S. university, this was like almost the best thing that could happen to you as an academic ... If it's just a less welcoming, atmosphere for science in general here, the best and brightest may not automatically come to the US as they have for decades.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skWt_PZosik" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skWt_PZosik</a>
A more lengthy article about his resentment against the government: <a href="https://newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-award-winning-mathematician" rel="nofollow">https://newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-award-winning-math...</a>
He has a point, but there are no obvious alternatives. It's still a long way towards fascism for USA to actually lose its attractiveness, and it's not that other countries are getting more democratic either
Canada and EU are currently far more attractive if not getting kidnapped by the government and sent to an El Salvadorian torture camp is a priority for you.
How many PhDs have been sent to El Salvador? EU doesn't nearly have the career opportunities as the US, even less so for foreigners. Canada might be slightly better, for its proximity to the US and being an English-speaking country
Canada can't even keep their own citizen anyone trying for much of anything comes to the USA same with the EU.
For mathematics Europe is an obvious alternative. The US and Europe produce about the same level of high level mathematics research per year.
Not really, one is complaining, the other (which the article's title says) is voting with their feet. He could have gone to literally any country/university in the world and he chose not to.<p>Also in the USA you just wait 4 (or 8) years and you have a new president. In many other countries you don't have that luxury.
> In the normal trajectory of a life in science, Morgan would be planning to set up his own laboratory conducting groundbreaking research designed to win the war on superbugs. But with an ongoing hiring freeze at NIH, his options are limited.<p>That seems a bit too optimistic to be a valid argument.
True. Morgan could also end up running pipettes and 96-well plates in Foster City for $45000/yr.
Morgan (or someone else)<p>The hiring freeze stops everyone not just that one specific person. A 4 year pause on new researchers is meaningful even if this specific person wasn’t going to start a lab.
Well, he might be <i>planning</i> to set up a lab. Probably wouldn't, though, statistically.
> That seems a bit too optimistic to be a valid argument.<p>I think you misunderstood, since that's not about optimism. Years ago, smart students from all over the world could hope for a successful career in American research. Now, in the USA many doors are closing in most academic domains, and few (potential) researchers dare plan any success story.
If you create an economic incentive to go into math an science you will have no trouble attracting good people. But, for years, it has been a race to the bottom where the US over-produced researchers, scientists etc.. But then to put salt in the wound it also imported more of them to drive the wages down further. As more people have flooded in to STEM at bargain basement prices, the quality of the research has also gone down.<p>All of this was by design so that big corporate interests could get cheap labor and increase profits. Since the US government is for sale to the highest bidder, and the corporations have no loyalty to the country, they will feed off the host until it can no longer sustain itself and then look for another host to feed off of.
This is the most interesting part of the way the US government is structured. Where the federal government has very little power compared to the states, each state is competing for talent. Like how Texas is more conservative and California is more liberal. May the best policies win. People will move to whichever set of laws better produces success. I don’t think that as true as it once was though.
This kind of Level 1 analysis misses what is really going on. "Brain drain" is not really a concern.<p>There is a tremendous glut of talented biomedical researchers. We have been overproducing them for decades. Even before the cuts, it was incredibly hard to go from a PhD to a tenured professorship. 5-15% would achieve that, depending how you measured.<p>The cuts have made things worse, but European/RoW funding is even stingier. It's not like there's a firehose of funding drawing away researchers. There may be a few high-profile departures, but the US is still the least-bad place to find research money.<p>We need to produce fewer PhDs and provide better support for those we do produce.
This kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]).<p>Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer <i>safe</i> for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has suddenly become a very undesirable place to live if you value these things.<p>Third, scientific freedom is under attack in the US. And there is nothing scientists value more than the freedom to pursue their research.<p>My take is that most Americans can't imagine a world where they are not number one. But that is a very naive idea.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-development/news/2025/12/government-of-canada-launches-new-initiative-to-recruit-world-leading-researchers.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-develop...</a>
> scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal<p>What is the alternative? Canada and Europe don't even have free speech.
This is, de facto, not really a differentiator any more. Only one of the countries in question asks to see my social media profiles at the border to make sure I'm ideologically appropriate.
...not sure if you're being sarcastic.
> many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]).<p>This illustrates exactly my point. Canada is planning on spending <i>up to</i> CAD$1.7B <i>over 12 years</i>. That is equivalent to USD$100M per year, or 0.3% of the NIH 2026 budget. Maybe if Europe does something similar they can get to 2%!<p>> The US is also no longer safe<p>I agree that Trump's regime has made the US a less welcoming place for foreign scientists, and that budget cuts mean less research will be done. What I disagree with is the idea that "brain drain" is a significant threat to US science. We simply have such an incredible oversupply of biomed PhDs that we should welcome the prospect of other countries absorbing the supply.
it's all about funding. for every 1 person nervous about intellectual safety in the US, there are 50–100 waiting to fill that spot, if not 1,000–10,000. Funding has been cut in academia, and less positions are available as a result. No country is remarkably filling this gap, aside from a hilariously few more availabilities and some more graduate student positions (who operate as the scientific labor in Europe and other countries, before graduating and having to come to the US for job opportunity).<p>As others have pointed out, presumably the outcome is that higher value scientists are favored, and higher impact research is demanded. When industry demands certain research, the funding appears because private entities will fund those positions and those grants. The widespread funding of all avenues of science is a great feature of American intellectual culture and hopefully it doesn't vanish. But it was a remarkably uneconomical arrangement and a total aberration of history, so I wouldn't hold my breath about it sticking around through the tides of history, it was more of a fluke, and many in academia wishing to regenerate that fluke are a bit delusional and a bit tied to the idea of a golden era like the boomers dreaming of the 1950s suburbs. A great deal of research is important science, but totally worthless for the foreseeable future on an economic basis. We might not yet conceive of why this research does have economic value, but it's so abstracted that as it stands, the value isn't tangible and it's thus impossible to defend reasonably.<p>Scientific freedom doesn't mean the freedom to expect a subsidized career on the basis of non-lucrative research. It's more of a privilege to have such a lifestyle that is downstream of a wealthy empire. Since America is going bankrupt, the dollar-reaper is coming for the superfluous. So, there goes your funding for conure breeding or the health benefits of community gardens and expect more stability if you're researching crop diseases or livestock vector research.
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Why do you feel scientists deserve to be punished for being against a political regime that is anti-science?
77,302,580 people voted for Trump in 2024. That is not "half the country".<p>Nor does he or ever did have the support of "(over) half the country". His maximum approval level in 2025 was at the beginning of his term at 47% "approve" and is currently around 36%, according to the Gallup poll.
Trump won the popular vote 49.9% vs 48.5% for Harris. It doesn’t automatically translate to half the country.<p>The popular vote does not matter in the US. The electoral college matters.
Trump didn't even win 50% of <i>the people who voted.</i> He got the <i>most</i> votes (a plurality), but ~1.5% of the votes went to third party candidates, slightly more than the gap between Harris and Trump voters. One of the many reasons this "we have a huge mandate to reshape the country in the image of Project 2025" line is so infuriating; you have to go back to 1968 to find an election with a smaller non-negative popular vote margin of victory.<p>(Also, "non-negative" is carrying a lot of weight, since both Trump in his first term and George W. Bush in his first lost the popular vote. The idea that a wide majority of the country is conservative, let alone MAGA, is risible.)
It's over half the electorate. Stop changing the standards for democracy and holding the current ex-wrestling valet and game show host to standards than literally no one has been held to in history. It's a desperate, dishonest way to cover up the failure of the opposition to be any better.
No, it was under half the electorate too (27% of the electorate didn't vote after all).<p>It was under half of the voters in the election itself as well. He won with a plurality, not a majority.
There's a huge difference between "definitely won the election" and "a massive mandate for sweeping change".
An electorate is only as good as the information it uses to make the choice. Fewer than 10% of Americans both stated they routinely read a newspaper (in print or online) yet still walked into a voting booth in 2024 and voted for Trump.
I've heard more than 0 people complaining that it's not safe, but not a whole lot. And not the productive people either. Also, unfortunately the same opinions that get you in trouble in the US will get you in trouble in western Europe. I'm not saying it's right, just that it doesn't seem to be actually draining brains.
>scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal<p><i>two</i> election results in the past ten years have apparently failed to teach y'all wholesome folx that many people around you are secretly unwholesome.
While I agree, US is still the top destination for research, I don’t agree with “Brain Drain is not a concern” nor do I agree with “We need fewer PhDs”. The real risk of drain is people leaving their fields of expertise to never return. Pretty much all AI startups at the moment are coming from and being built by PhDs. The pace of innovation slows down and it can have huge long term economic impact. Having fewer PHDs also exacerbates that problem. If fewer people are looking for funding in the first place, you’d have even fewer ideas that could end up contributing meaningfully to society. The only solution to funding problems is more funding.
>The real risk of drain is people leaving their fields of expertise to never return.<p>That is happening right now, all the time! Especially in the biomed field! Many, many PhDs spend 5-8 years getting their degree and receiving minimal pay, then 4+ years being nomadic postdocs, also making terrible money, only to eventually arrive at the end of the road and realize they have to do something completely different.<p>It is unsustainable for every professor to train 10 PhDs in their career, because there aren't going to be 10 professorships (or even 3) for those PhDs to fill. Funding has to grow at the same exponential rate as the number of researchers. It did, from roughly 1950s to 1980s, as the university system expanded to accommodate the Boomer generation. It has slowed since, and the PhD to professorship pipeline got longer and leakier. It's doing a tremendous disservice to the bright, well-intentioned young people who join PhD programs.
Why does the fact that there isn’t enough funding for the PhDs that exist imply we should produce fewer of them? At least from what the article mentions, figuring out new and better ways to fight diseases seems like one of the most important problems a human could be working on. In my mind the solution is to provide funding and fix the funding process, not produce fewer scientists.<p>Also, those scientists already exist. If the US decides not to fund them, they will go produce patents and grow the economies of other places. Many countries wish they could attract the talent that the US does.
<< Why does the fact that there isn’t enough funding for the PhDs that exist imply we should produce fewer of them?<p>In most of the world, most humans have to move within the realm of available resources. One could easily say that if a manager of US sees too many PhDs, it is natural to conclude that since there is not enough resources to go around, adding more resource consumers is silly. We can argue all over whether it is a good policy, or whether the allocation makes sense, or whether the resources are really not there, but, how is is this a difficult logic gate?
The need for things exists independent of the standalone economic viability of those things. That is the entire point of public funding of various resources, including scientific funding. The “available” resources is a political decision.<p>Further, reduction in funds for public resources or increase in misery for scientists are not in and of themselves evidence that those resources were over-funded or too cushy. For the research discussed in the article it is quite clearly a political decision, not directly grounded in a need for less medical research.
<< The “available” resources is a political decision.<p>It invariably always is.<p><< The need for things exists independent of the standalone economic viability of those things.<p>Sure, but there is only so long that can go on funding studying of rather pointless stuff[1] ( added UK example to not be accused of hating on anything in particular US-wise ).<p>[1]<a href="https://web-archive.southampton.ac.uk/cogprints.org/5272/1/ghirlanda_jansson_enquist2002.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://web-archive.southampton.ac.uk/cogprints.org/5272/1/g...</a><p><< Further, reduction in funds for public resources or increase in misery for scientists are not in and of themselves evidence that those resources were over-funded or too cushy.<p>I am not suggesting that. I am literally saying: there is only so much money. That is it. And if push comes to shove, studies of whether chicken finds humans pretty take a back seat to more pressing matters.
There is a (perhaps apocryphal) story of Michael Faraday showing his new invention of an electric motor to a politician in 1821. He had invented it after investigating strange twitching of a magnetic compass needle.<p>After seeing the motor, the politician asked “what good is it?” and based on what I can find Faraday either said “what use is a newborn baby” or “one day you’ll be able to tax it”.<p>So two points: One, you don’t always know things will have a high ROI from the start. Sometimes you just have to be curious. And two, politicians care about the next election in two/four years, not planting trees that won’t bear fruit for 30 years.
We have vast amounts of resources. More than enough to supply the basic needs of everyone in the country.<p>The US is currently choosing to divert absolutely staggering amounts of those resources away from things we have traditionally valued—science, art, infrastructure, taking care of the least fortunate among us, etc—and using them instead to enrich the already-wealthy, in the most blatant and cruel ways.<p>There is no <i>possible</i> way this can be spun as being about "available resources". The grift is utterly, 100% transparent.
<< There is no possible way this can be spun as being about "available resources". The grift is utterly, 100% transparent.<p>Eh, I mean if you put it that way, I suppose all those budgets are just a show and not at all an indication of how utterly fucked we are as a country unless we both:<p>a) massively reduce spending
b) massively raise taxes<p>In very real terms, there is only so much money. Some additional money can be borrowed, but we a slowly ( but surely ) reaching a breaking point on that as well.<p>The issue is: no one is willing to sacrifice anything. And I am sympathetic, but if hard choices are not made now, they will be kinda made for us anyway.
<i>Yes</i> we have to massively raise taxes.<p>We need to claw back billions and billions and billions of dollars from people for whom it will make <i>zero</i> difference in their daily lives, so that we can spend it on people for whom $100 can change their month, and $10000 can change their life.
You are forgetting that tenured researchers often need lots of PhD students to actually do their research. So that ratio of 8 PhDs to a tenured researchers could actually be pretty good.
That's a result of the funding model focused on small competitive grants. You could probably get at least as good research with a funding model that replaces every three PhD students with a student and a staff scientist. But then the society would have fewer PhDs overall, which would have unpredictable consequences.
Pretty good for the professor, not so good for the students.
You would forget that this would cause exponential growth: in a couple decades, a single lab could produce more people seeking tenure track than an entire country's worth of positions; there need to be smarter ways to provide the requisite labor for science, since this is clearly unsustainable praxis. Running a pyramid scheme of this magnitude is only going to cause an implosion—which we may already be witnessing.
Set aside the question of how we might implement this (which I grant is complex and path-dependent)... but imagine if 5% of the wealth of every US billionaire were instead allocated to research and development.<p>Ultimately I don't think even the billionaires would be unhappy.
Hurting yourself to hurt others is a well-established political practice in America.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_in_swimming" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_in_swimming</a>
It's also repelling their own citizen. Lots of videos of people being fed up with the ambient angst in the US any time they come back from another country.
What country is it attracting then?
It's incredibly inexpensive for countries to import that top talent into their own universities. But governments just don't see the value, for the most part.
Meanwhile I’ve been getting Migrate to Canada ads in my IG feed…
But we’re great now I thought?
I understand that the government is now too coarse to use soft power, and maybe it wasn't even working as well as it used to, but it is bizarre to undercut the sciences when their military capability is derived almost entirely from high technology since they can't field or lose lots of soldiers. I get they want to be Rome 3.0 or some bullshit, but Rome was famous for investing in engineering.<p>A bunch of dunces.<p>Or perhaps they are so far up their own assholes that they think AI is going to do research by itself with no funding from now on.<p>Ironically enough, the guy that coined the term "soft power" recently died. He did his doctorate with Henry Kissinger.
They're happy to fund the military, they have a list of words [1][2] that they use to flag grant applications, including "female", "bias", "political" and others. Cuts seem to be directed at biomedicine, health and social studies.<p>[1] <a href="https://grant-witness.us/" rel="nofollow">https://grant-witness.us/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-fede...</a>
Nationalists are all the same and all hate the country as it is vs how they imagine it to be - see the uk brexiters ignoring science and the creative industries.<p>Most of all they hate intelligent people as they see their schemes for what they are.
Trump is clearly winning his war on America.
I think the US draining other countries of their best and brightest is why many countries have been left behind in terms of economic development.<p>Other countries need to take up the mantle of research and they can't do that if all of them go to the US. I think this is overall good for the rest of the world, because relying on the US and the sociopathic companies that exploit public research for personal gain is bad for the entire world.
Frankly, if the places that dominate at healthcare delivery efficiency also dominate at research, that could be good for the world.<p>The US having a dogshit healthcare delivery system but so much research means that good vertical integration is not possible.<p>Conversely a more integrated EU — continent scale welfare state — could do really interesting "integrated OpEx and CapEx" medical research in ways that are simply impossible in the US.<p>Remember the Danes making Ozempic is making something that is fundamentally far more useful for Americans than Danes (of course the money is good for Danes). Most non-American drug research today probably chases the lucrative American market, but ideally that would change.
You're making a lot of assumptions: that providers are healthcare providers, that providers want to provide more healthcare, or that providers are incentivized to pay for better healthcare.<p>I'm sure the system you want would exist if healthcare providers had one customer to worry about: the US government. I can't think of a single doctor, the ones that actually want to help people and not cash a phat check, that likes the current system of filling out paperwork or begging to do surgeries for patients from insurance companies.<p>Most actually want to just provide care.<p>Get rid of the middle man, get rid of the profit motive, and you'll get a system that society can actually shape.
I am pretty sure we are still attracting top talents. We are not, however, attracting good to mediocre talents. Is that a good thing? What’s going to happen to all these mediocre graduate programs spread out all over the country where they simply existed to satiate foreign demand?
now chinese know kill line in us, chinese will not go to us again.
For an American startup/technology forum, this place is remarkably anti-America, anti-capitalism, anti-AI, anti-crypto.
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>As Trump slashes science funding, young researchers flee abroad. Without solid innovation, the US could cease to have the largest biomedical ecosystem in the world.<p>Oh no. We might lose the largest most expensive medical system in the world. I would sure hate to have an affordable lightweight medical system. I mean, aren't we doomed if we can't spend another five trillion dollars on a covid shot. Think of the poor pharma companies.
Come to Europe, we have cookies ;)
We know, the law requires you tell us of this if they’re for marketing purposes.
I'd love to, but where to? The Swiss are trying to cap population, the Germans elected the AfD, the UK no longer counts.
> The Swiss are trying to cap population
> the UK no longer counts<p>Well the Swiss are not in EU either, but both are still in Europe
Ireland is solid, especially for any sort of biotech/medical. Strong critical skills immigration path, good wages, pretty much every major company has a facility there (many rivaling the US sites in size), friendly and welcoming place. Housing is a bit of struggle, mainly for renters.<p>I made the leap this year. No regrets.
Irish infra is not great if you compare it to many advanced European countries. I hate they still do not have a train/tram connection from the airport to the city. Taxes also make you weep. Not to mention an immense risk of losing all those corp taxes and industry if US pushes ahead and creates barriers for companies to trade. It is great at many things but also has some downsides.
Tell me more. As someone with dual Canadian/US citizenship (former EU citizen that I gave up 20+ years ago) - how hard is it to get in?
> the Germans elected the AfD<p>On federal level they are still at about 25% without an option to come into power. It is bad, but it is not hopeless, yet.
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And original bottle caps on all plastic bottles!<p>(Like seriously, it turns out to be pretty useful in practice. :) )
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I feel like if you care about taxes on capital gains you are rich enough not to care about taxes on capital gains.
No, I'm not rich, I'm just an entrepreneur, so most of my income is from capital gains. And most (almost all) of my expenses is paying salaries and vendors.
If you want to comfortably retire, then one of the following is probably true:<p>1. you have a solid pension<p>2. you should care about capital gains taxes<p>3. you're REALLY rich and don't care.
Oh yeah, and just wait until you see you have to pay the US taxes on your income too. Tax system for US citizens living abroad is insanely bad.
Only the difference.
> Oh yeah, and just wait until you see you have to pay the US taxes on your income too.<p>No, you don't.
You still have to file but you get "Federal Tax Credits" for income tax paid abroad and seeing how a EU country's income tax will almost certainly be higher than the US', you'll end up paying nothing.
There's also tax treaties to avoid double taxation in other ways.
I’ve seen plenty of videos covering it from expats stating they still do in fact pay taxes back to the US. Maybe the info is outdated or things have changed recently, but a cursory google makes it seems like that “No, you don’t,” isn’t true. It looks like the Federal Tax Credit only covers up to $130,000 per year of income. Then you pay on whatever you make over that (assuming you don’t have other credits).
> I’ve seen plenty of videos covering it from expats stating they still do in fact pay taxes back to the US.<p>"Expats" living in Europe?
I ask because "expat" usually refers to someone who moved to a lower cost of living country that may also have significantly lower income tax compared to the EU.<p>> It looks like the Federal Tax Credit only covers up to $130,000 per year of income.<p>$130k/yr is absolute bank in Europe.
From a quick Google search, that would put you well in the top 5% of earners in Berlin, just as an example.
So, this shouldn't be much of an issue.
Not a tax advice, but AFAIK, if you had to pay $1000 to US IRS, and already paid $800 to another country, then you owe US $200.<p>The country must have a tax treaty with US, so they exchange the info about your taxes in background. But many countries in EU has higher tax rates than US, then you owe $0.
It's not surprising. smart, educated people are a direct threat to the current administration and in general the US right has had academia in its sights for awhile. Ultimately it's bad for the country but how the US has been trending. Similarly, US education funding and the content of it has been politicized and it's producing a negative feedback loop.<p>Political goals and what's good for the average person are completely disconnected at this point.
Does that mean Europe will get a sustainable lead on irreproachable Science?
I think that depends on a lot of factors. E.g. will there be a turn around in the US, and if so how fast? Will Europe and other nations increase science funding to account for all the new talent that wants to come? Will that funding be permanent, not just a one time effort?<p>Also, if the US restores their democracy and also decides to value science again, will the salaries for scientists abroad compete enough to prevent scientists moving back.<p>To maintain a sustainable lead the money and investment has to be substantial and long term.
Europe isn't the one to watch, IMO. It's China. China has already significantly increased it's R&D funding and in some areas, particularly solar and battery tech, it's world leading.<p>China also has been playing the long game with the build out of it's technology capabilities. I could very easily see them doing the same for medicine. They aren't afraid of losing money on investment for a particularly long period of time. They are currently thinking in decades and not quarters.
> Also, if the US restores their democracy<p>We don’t have elections anymore? When did this happen?
China also likes to claim it is a democracy because it holds elections.<p>It is fair to say that the USA is still a democracy, but not because of elections. Elections have little to do with democracy. In fact, if the majority of the population hold the view that elections equate to democracy, you don't have a democracy.
No, the US still spends 5x what Europe does on biomedical research, measured as a percent of GDP.
lol no it's Europe dude for the same reason they are lagging in everything they will lag in this why would you think otherwise.<p>On a more serious note any of the freedoms people are talking about disappearing in the USA were either already long gone or a decade further down the road of dying in Europe. Hell they are routinely jailing people for speech now.
China is putting up the money, not Europe. Europe only gets a slice if they invest in it.
For all the recent hand-wringing about the U.S. becoming less welcoming to immigrants, the U.S. is still far, far ahead of any European country in terms of immigration opportunities. If you're qualified to come to anywhere in Europe, you were qualified to come to the United States years or decades ago.
No. Europe is in decline. Asia will.
It is not a "brain drain" when you declare war on science and fire all of your scientists. There must be some other phrase for that.
Brainwashing? ;)
Brain flush?
There's a version of this that doesn't get talked about enough -- what happens to the compounds already in study when the researcher who designed the safety protocol leaves. Institutional knowledge about why certain interactions were flagged or screened against isn't usually documented well enough to hand off. It just lives in the PI's head.<p>We've been building Bio-Twin (biotwin.io) partly for exactly this reason -- AI pre-screening that externalizes the safety logic so it's not dependent on which scientist is still employed. Not pitching, just -- this is a real downstream consequence of the brain drain that seems underdiscussed here.