You’re confusing two different questions. ‘Should we have more STEM PhDs in government?’ is a reasonable policy debate. ‘Is losing 10,000 STEM PhDs in weeks a problem?’ has a clearer answer… yes, because institutional knowledge doesn’t rebuild quickly. Also, there’s no evidence this was performance-based attrition. Lastly, recruitment becomes harder after mass departures signal instability.
The burden isn’t on critics to prove some theoretical optimal number. The burden is on defenders of this exodus to show it improved government technical capacity rather than hurt it.
I disagree--we're all paying for it, so it should be justified regardless.
And I don't need an optimal number. But the common refrain is essentially that more is always better, and fewer means we're losing our standing in the world. Always.
Maybe keeping a lot of them but shedding some percentage is actually more optimal. But I'm open to being wrong. That's why I'm asking for metrics.
If this was intentional workforce reduction, then the agencies affected should show improved efficiency or output with fewer people. We should see faster regulatory reviews, better grant decisions, stronger technical evaluations, just with leaner teams.
Instead, what we’re likely to see is degraded capacity, slower timelines, and reduced technical oversight. If that happens, will you acknowledge this was a mistake? Or will any negative outcome just get blamed on the remaining employees?
No, I accept the outcomes you are claiming are likely. I'm talking about the net results for the rest of us.
There are now 10k STEM PhDs who are (presumably, mostly) not being paid by the federal government, and are now employed in the private sector and contributing more to the federal budget than taking from it. Or retired, as noted in the article.
On the downside, some grants are maybe taking longer to be disbursed? Not ideal, but again: there's some reason we didn't previously have 100k more STEM PhDs. And we could make the same argument: if we had, we'd have faster regulatory reviews, better grant decisions, and stronger technical evaluations.
There's basically no way to argue for any number other than "more." That suggests an unfalsifiable argument.
Per the article, retirements were a big chunk. I guess the rest could be homeless and on social welfare systems for the rest of their lives, but I think it's more likely they have or will find employment elsewhere.
The US government operates with such a huge debt that we aren’t paying for these things. Instead we are paying for the long term effects of such spending.
Cutting 10k scientists could therefore result in increased taxes without anyone ever seeing any savings. Or it could result in net gain from 1$ all the way up to what their cost * interest in the debt.
Therefore there’s no obvious side who takes the default win here. Instead you need actual well supported arguments.
The burden isn’t on critics to prove some theoretical optimal number. The burden is on defenders of this exodus to show it improved government technical capacity rather than hurt it.