I kinda sorta envy Chinese science policy.
The Chinese government is ramping up its support for science, announcing plans to boost two key budgets at the country’s biggest political meeting called the Two Sessions.
China has proposed to increase its overall research and development (R&D) expenditure by at least 7% per year over the next five years, which translates to billions of extra dollars each year. This typically covers government and private-industry spending on basic research, applied research and experimental development.
China’s R&D expenditure has skyrocketed over the past 20 years. Last year, it exceeded 3.9 trillion yuan (US$567 billion). For the past five years, it has has increased by at least 8% a year.
They had me at “support for science.” I don’t have an unqualified envy — the USA has been gutting science in this country, which I’d like to see stop — but there’s more to improving science than throwing money at it. China is going to direct money by dictating how it should be spent, and I’d rather see science supported by informed, peer-directed investment.
Unfortunately, the US approach is to slash the science budget and put it under the control of an asylum full of demented lunatics who know nothing about science. We’ve chosen the very worst science policy possible!
Oh, I’m sure there’s worse science policies.
It just takes the Trump admin a while to come up with them, and they’ve been distracted by fascisting.
If China was not such an awful repressive system (with at least one million prisoners in concentration camps in East Turkestan [Xinjiang in the language of the Han occupiers]) it would be something we could learn from.
But there are no guard rails. When the fat predecessor had a brain fart in the 1950s 37 million people starved to death.
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“has increased by at least 8% a year.”
If the western nations are to keep up, they will have to emulate the “Sputnic scare” from 1957- 1969 with massive investments in education and science.
But that will require first utterly destroying the far right populists in the various nations.
This is one if the point where it becomes clear our oligarchs are not only greedy assholes but also extremely stupid.
Where do they think their riches come from? Without scientific and technical innovations and a well educated workforce their business empires will collapse, and yet they bribe politicians to cut spending on education and research year by year.
@3 mordred
They think they lifted themselves up by the bootstraps by sheer competence, forgetting they were born rich and earn their money off other peoples inventions and other peoples work.
@3 & 4
The rich also look at in the following ways:
1. I have mine, lower my taxes and screw the future because l am rich and will be fine
2. Why I pay taxes to help someone else?
3. If this country implodes, they believe their money will protect them and they can go somewhere else.
@3 & 4
The rich also look at in the following ways:
1. I have mine, lower my taxes and screw the future because l am rich and will be fine
2. Why I pay taxes to help someone else?
3. If this country implodes, they believe their money will protect them and they can go somewhere else.
I don’t claim to know much about science funding troubles, but I get the impression that a LOT of science funding gets wasted on things the rich and powerful wish was true and exploitable for profit. We really shouldn’t have incompetent people like Elon Musk telling us what research to do.
I know that pure research can get the axe a lot because it doesn’t guarantee a quick return on investment, but it needs to be done so that we can understand what potential new things are worth investing our time and resources in.