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> If you want funding for certain medical research, have your state issue grants. There is nothing that requires it to be the federal government.

States would need to increase taxes to fund more research, which would cause some of the wealthiest residents to flee to low-tax states. This would result in the pro-research states losing tax revenue and eventually cutting their research funding. The decline in research funding would result in the U.S. experiencing brain drain similar to what has been experienced in red states[1] for decades.

Some of us don't want the U.S. to experience brain drain that will cause our country to become more like the rural states that suffer from the loss of their best and brightest.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=red+state+brain+drain




> States would need to increase taxes to fund more research, which would cause some of the wealthiest residents to flee to low-tax states.

The people who actually pay most of the taxes aren't the billionaires (both because there aren't that many of them and because they already engage in sophisticated tax avoidance), they're the likes of senior partners at law firms, cardiologists, successful small business owners, etc. But these people are not only not going to move to Wyoming for lower taxes, because they can't operate the businesses that them that amount of money there, a lot of the reason Wyoming has lower taxes is because they're large net recipients of federal funds. If they had to fund their own stuff that would make it more attractive to live in the states that are currently doing the funding.

Moreover, research funding has always been a small proportion of government spending, e.g. the NIH is ~0.7% of the federal budget. This does not require a large change in tax revenues to move somewhere else.

> Some of us don't want the U.S. to experience brain drain that will cause our country to become more like the rural states that suffer from the loss of their best and brightest.

The first search result from your link is an article saying that isn't actually happening:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/tenure/20...




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