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The decline of EUro-science

There is an interesting and deeply depressing article in Time Europe about how EUrope is falling behind the USA in the funding of scientific research. European scientists are flocking the research labs in the USA, where the money and conditions are far better.

The article reveals the usual EUro-procedure whenever catching up with America is the agenda.

Question asked by EUropeans: how much money is America spending? Answer: A lot.

Question not asked by EUropeans: where does all that American money come from in the first place? Answer: by having lots of trade, done by tradesmen.

Question also not asked by EUropeans: who is spending all this American money and how? Answer: American research money is, a lot of it, spent by those same tradesmen, who spend it quite sensibly, in ways that produce innovation and profits.

Next question asked by EUropeans: what is to be done? Answer offered by EUropeans: EUropean governments must spend a lot more on research than they do now. Result: EUrope as a whole has even less money for tradesmen to spend on anything, and research in EUrope becomes even less sensible and even more stupid. Total spending doesn’t grow very fast, which is just as well, because if EUro-governments spent as much as “America” (i.e. the American government and all those American tradesmen, added together) spends on research, that would bankrupt EUrope completely. Question: what happens when European tradesmen do get involved in investing in research? Answer:

And what if a scientist tries to cover the shortfall by procuring funds on his own? In some places, that apparently deserves punishment. Michael Krausz, a professor at Hamburg University’s Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, accepted research funds from an unnamed drugmaker; German prosecutors are investigating whether he did so in exchange for promotion of its products. Clinic director Dieter Naber, who notes that a 2001 university inquiry cleared Krausz of wrongdoing, wonders how institutes like his are supposed to pay their bills. Industry is an essential source of funding – though in 2000, E.U. firms spent €79 billion less on R and D than U.S. companies – but Germany lacks a clear legal framework for the donor-recipient relationship. “Nearly every contact to industry is being criminalized,” Naber says. “Because local governments are bankrupt, we are being asked to procure third-party funding, including funds from industry. But often, when we do so, prosecutors are called in.”

Which makes nonsense of an earlier paragraph in the same story:

That message is getting through to Europe’s politicians, including policymakers at both the national and E.U. levels. Amid the chronic complaints about bureaucracy and lack of resources, there are signs of progress. In some institutions, public and private, Europeans are stealing a page from the American playbook, offering researchers better funding, better facilities, better support for entrepreneurship and competition, and an overall better environment for world-class science. No single European country has the brain power or the financial clout to challenge America’s scientific preeminence, so the E.U. is trying to develop a European Research Area — a “common market” for science — building networks, pooling strengths and raising standards regionwide. As German Chancellor Gerhard Schrõder noted last week when he presented his government’s priorities for 2004, “Only if we manage to keep our innovation at the top will we be able to reach a level of prosperity that will allow us to keep our welfare system in today’s changing conditions.” …

“Building networks”, “pooling strengths”, “raising standards regionwide”. If only “we” can manage to “keep our innovation at the top” (hah!) will we do as well as it says we must in our latest Five Year Plan. And the purpose of all this? To “keep our welfare system”. Gerhard Schrõder is not the answer. He is the problem. By recycling this kind of drivel, and by doing so before it gets down to describing the actual problem Time Europe presumably keeps its lines open to these EUro-idiots, to ensure that the supply of idiot EUro-quotes never dries up.

Messages constantly “get through” to EUrocrats. But they don’t do anything about them except interpret them as excuses to intensify the processes that were causing the problems referred to in the messages. They are in a hole, in this matter as in so many others. Tell them this, and insofar as their digging dug the hole in the first place, they will just keep right on digging. (“Nearly every contact to industry is being criminalized.”) Tell them that the hole is accordingly getting deeper, and they will dig even deeper, even faster. This is what they do.

EUrope is ruled by the equivalent of pre-modern doctors. The last thing you want to do is tell them that you have a problem. If you do that, they will then inflict their solution on you. You can feel the blood being drained out of the EUropean economy, and out of Europe itself, with every year that passes.

35 comments to The decline of EUro-science

  • Lynne

    I’m getting tired of all this sniping between Europe and America. We should have joint scientific labs and joint space projects. Europe and America have become the most advanced and freedom loving societies ever formed. I would hate to see us lose this way of life to others who are not so freedom loving because we can’t get along well enough to work together. If we can’t hang together, we will all hang separately.

  • Brian Micklethwait

    Lynne

    Who exactly are you criticising here? The rulers of the EU for their wrong-headed attempts to compete with and (in their dreams!) surpass the USA, or us Samzidatistas for writing sniping articles about this foolishness, and comparing their folly with relative US sanity.

    Free trade, low taxes and light regulation, in both the USA and in Europe would ensure all the trans-Atlantic cooperation you could possibly wish for, and I would love to see it. Present trends of EUro-policy are mostly in the opposite direction.

    On the other hand, a sort of USA-EURO superstate, full of joint programmes doing this and that, would erode the very freedoms you refer to.

    Meanwhile, the best thing that can happen is for the USA to do what it is doing, namely offer opportunities and advancement to European scientists, so that if sanity ever does erupt over here, there can then maybe be a European brain drain back to here again. At least there will still be some European brains to drain.

  • Lynne, if Euro, British, US or transnational companies want to have joint research venture, then they will (and sometimes do)… but what is NOT needed is boondoggle projects set up by governments and funded by taxpayers.

  • Matt W.

    I think the entire jist of the post was that the entire reasons and methods of European research seem to be fundamentally different that US methods…why should “hang together” with europe on this matter if they won’t get an even half-way competent funding model, all the US would be doing is subsidizing European research. I also would contend about how freedom loving most of Europe is…they don’t seem to overly mind a soveriegnty gobbling monster imposed on them. And another point…European politicians themselves seem to want to get rid of science, how ELSE could you explain REACH, that horrendous chemical protocol that will require tens of thousands of industry breaking retests? The only conclusion anyone could draw is that they’re desperate to halt research in the fields of chemistry (and by necessity several segments of biology as well) its estimated that enviromentalist wetdream is going to probably cost them 700,000 jobs in chemistry. Also, theres no reason to “team up” researchers share results for peer review around the world, and thats good enough for collaboration, anything else and the US would be tying itself to a dead elephant.

  • US universities are far richer than EU universities because they are private. Of course the EU could make their universities private but they choose not to because however you work it, some people end up getting shafted. The brilliant poor may get in on scholarships but the mediocre rich do too, while the mediocre poor certainly do not.

    Having said that, the phenomena you describe must be partially correct – that while the US has these policies the EU cannot compete. Nevertheless, the idea that this harms the EU economies is not born out by the figures, which show several welfare based economies suffering no more from the recent downturn than the US (and indeed the UK not going into recession at all). Furthermore, all analyses of subjective well-being show Europeans to be happier than Americans. There’s not much point having a galloping economy if doesn’t make you any happier.

    There are two paradigms operating in the EU and US. The US paradigm clearly generates wealth but it’s not clear if this is sustainable. The EU obviously right to wait and see if their paradigm is sustainable since it delivers greater happiness. While they’re waiting to see they should be prepared to put up with the fact that the US has better higher education institutions and does better research.

  • TomD

    I am vastly amused when the EU, faced with outright and obvious American superiority in technology, concludes that the solution is not to emulate the US system but but to hamper it.

    Welfare system indeed.

    I think that what is stopping the US from following too closely the EU’s decent into socialism is that our society isn’t nearly as stratified. Here, the top 10% of income earners are constantly changing. It’s common for someone in the 30th percentile to be in the top 5 or 10 percent just a few years later.

    If someone is at the bottom and has no realistic expectations of significant advancement, socialism sounds pretty good. That won’t fly here to anywhere near the same extent because that guy at the bottom fully expects to make it.

    As has been proven here, a permanent underclass is all for socialism.

  • David Crawford

    jdsm wrote:

    “US universities are far richer than EU universities because they are private.”

    Um, jdsm, you are clearly an idiot. There are more U.S. college students enrolled in goverment-owned universities than in private universities. Have you never heard of the University of California (Berkeley)? That’s a state school, part of the University of California system. UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles ) is another.

    Tuition at state-owned universities is set (for state residents) at about 1/4 to 1/3 of the cost of operating the university. The remaining 2/3 to 3/4 of the cost is provided by the state out of tax revenues. In some cases there are special streams of revenues that are set aside for higher education funding. (In Washington state, where I live, any revenue the state recieves for logging rights on state-owned land is legally required to be used for higher education.)

    People like jdsm always give me a chuckle — nim-rods who talk about the USA but who have no f*****g idea about the place.

  • Shawn

    “Nevertheless, the idea that this harms the EU economies is not born out by the figures, which show several welfare based economies suffering no more from the recent downturn than the US (and indeed the UK not going into recession at all).”

    Except that the U.S. is still outperforming all of Europe combined, even during a recession. When the cycle turns, as it now is, the U.S. will once again leave Europe in its wake.

    “Furthermore, all analyses of subjective well-being show Europeans to be happier than Americans. There’s not much point having a galloping economy if doesn’t make you any happier.”

    Are they actually happier? Or just very well tranquilized and sedated by Nanny State? As an example, the assasination of the Swedish politician recently. This took place in a crowded mall with a large number of people, men included, watching. They could have tried to prevent the murder. If not possible, they at least could have tried to stop the man escaping. Instead they just stood there and did nothing, despite the fact that the assasin had a fair ways to go to get out of the mall. This is the result of decades of Nanny State. A population that may say its “happy”, but is in reality is just placid. If the same thing had happened in the U.S. the guy would have never made it out of the mall.

    “The US paradigm clearly generates wealth but it’s not clear if this is sustainable.”

    The U.S. has been generating more wealth than Europe for over a hundred years now. And the U.S. economy has been growing faster than Europes for nearly two hundred. That loooks pretty sustainable to me. Meanwhile, many social statistics in the U.S. such as crime are improving, while they are getting worse in much of Europe.

    Sustainable is one of those words Nanny’s beaurcrats love to use justify Nanny’s omni-presence and totalitarianism. The reality as far as Europe is concerned is that the welfare state is unsustainable. Europe will not be able to afford it in less than 25 years in its current form, and likely cannot truly afford it now. Europe will sooner or later be forced to make American style reforms.

    As to happiness, it is highly subjective. Many Americans love to complain, and are always thinking that they and their government can do better, hence they are not likely to claim the same level of happiness as Europeans. But this does not prove that Europes system is therefore better, or even that it delivers more genuine happiness. It may well be that Americans are in fact healthier in their approach to life, less likely to settle for mediocrity, more demanding of themselves and their government. And one thing I do know for sure, like most Americans I would rather be miserable and free, than happy and a slave.

  • Joe

    Wow Shawn! That was great. American versus EUropean happiness? Seems to me immigration is in one direction and has been since the “new world” was discovered. Having lived in EUrope for 3 years, I can say with certainty that, for me, “It’s a great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.” My last vacation was to Puerto Rico so I’m not even sure about the visit part.

  • Brian Micklethwait

    Joe

    Excellent point. If EUrope makes you happy, which is surely the point rather than just Europeans being happy, why don’t people move from the USA to EUrope in greater numbers?

    Who moves where is such a potent piece of evidence. I remember that this was the one statistic that USSR-apologists simply couldn’t talk their way around. If it was so great, why did the movers consist almost entirely of people trying to escape the damn thing?

    And I quite agree that it is EUrope that now has all the sustainability problems, not the USA. France, especially, from what I hear and read.

  • I did a (scientific) Ph.D. at Cambridge. I know lots of really bright Germans who have come to Britain to do Ph.D.s (because German graduate education is a shambles and British isn’t, at least for the moment), have got British Ph.Ds, and have then gone to American universities for research careers, never to be seen again. It is partly the salaries, but it isn’t the salaries as much as that America is where the good people to work with are, and British academics spend a huge portion of the time coping with the bureaucracies imposed upon them either directly or indirectly by the British government, at the same time as they have swallowed lots of appalling management speak in how they administer themselves. Allowing Oxford and Cambridge, whose colleges are traditionally endowment based organisations similar to US private universities, to essentially be nationalised is a great catastrophe. This is a process that has been going on for decades, but the urge of this labour government to control and manage them (by, for instance, reducing their independence to control who they admit) is just appalling.

    On the other hand, the academics are generally fairly squishy leftists who have generally accepted and indeed encouraged government controls and voted for Tony Blair. They complain about the bureaucracy and the low pay without yet really putting it together in their heads what caused it.

    And the great thing about the US university system is the diversity of the institutions. You have private universities, state universities, federal research institutions, the odd city university, Jesuit universities, and various other things. This constitutes something like competition. And if you are American and poor but bright, the cheapest option to you is probably to go to the best state university in your home state. This probably doesn’t have the cachet or going to Harvard but the quality of the education will not be much worse (and if you are good enough, you can then go to Harvard as a grad student anyway). And if you are lucky enough to live in California or Michigan or somewhere else with a *really good* state university, it really isn’t much worse than going to Harvard.

  • Sam

    One thing I noticed about the article was its focus on publically financed and university-based research labs, and the absence of private labs. What about Bayer, Siemens, Philips, etc? Is the differential compared to US companies as great?

  • Julian

    For Lynn:

    I’m getting tired of all this sniping between Europe and America. We should have joint scientific labs and joint space projects.

    — Why? What can Europe contribute?

    Europe and America have become the most advanced and freedom loving societies ever formed. I would hate to see us lose this way of life to others who are not so freedom loving because we can’t get along well enough to work together. If we can’t hang together, we will all hang separately.

    — Why? The U.S. is doing fine on it’s own. We don’t need the EU and UN holding us back. That hanging comment is a nice sounding quote, but how exactly will the U.S. hang? How will working with Europe keep us from hanging?

  • Joel Hammer

    Europe is a good example of the failure of good intentions. Even a democratic socialist society slips into stagnation. Think what happens when the union runs the company. The rights and benefits of the workers take priority over the needs of the company to be competitive and profitable. Bankruptcy is the sure outcome. Problem is, when countries go backrupt, there is a LOT of fallout.

    Joel

  • Eric Sivula

    Sam, in Europe, by this stage in the game, the idea that PRIVATE entities would have enough cash on hand to afford R&D is alien. Most large corporations are ither partially owned by the government, receiving subsidies to stay afloat, or both.

    Besides, considering the legality issues is some European countries of corporate support of Research and Development, bringing up US Corporate R&D might make some of the citizenry question those laws. Not to mention that such an article, or section of an article, would remind EU Corporations that even during an recession US Companies can afford things they cannot.

  • its jake

    The entire issue is crystalized in the fact that the EUrocrats plan a government agency to create a common market for science. Since when do governments create markets (other than the CIA and the crack/lsd market)? So the Eurocrats will spend billions of euros to create a command economy (“common marrket” in eurish) for science.

    Britain and America know from experience that being the leaders in tech (or any other field) requires only three things that cost nothing: tax incentives for business r&d or low business taxes overall, a free market, and a well-enforced law of contracts. But Europe wants subsidies *too* – which will channel efficient market allocations for tech to those recipients that can best profit the policymakers in the government. Nobless oblige.

  • its jake

    in response to david crawford’s “Tuition at state-owned universities is set (for state residents) at about 1/4 to 1/3 of the cost of operating the university. The remaining 2/3 to 3/4 of the cost is provided by the state out of tax revenues.”

    I think your figures are overgeneralized and innacurate. Tax revenues are not the only means for funding universities. Keeping with the tech example, it is extremely common for U.S. companies to fund an entire professorship with grad and postgrads and a research budget. At the University of Central Florida, you’ve got everyone from ATT and Siemens to Lockheed and NASA buying their own professorships and reaping the recruitment and data that results. The universities win out by sharing the patents (and derivative patents) and the royalties – yes – state public institutions. Ever hear of Gatorade? Every time you buy a bottle of Gatorade you give a nice chunk to the University of Florida. And that’s just one patent for one product at one puiblic school in one of the fifty united states. We’re talking billions of dollars a year in royalties going to schools in a free-market framework. Professors are hired and fired at public institutions based on how much money they bring into the university through their research, and the professors – even at public schools – share the patents and royalties. There were two engineering professors of miine at the University of Central Florida who were pimply, early-thirties millionaires from patents and royalty agreements earned at that one minor school (presumably, they still worked at UCF because they could make even more millions).

    In the tech department, our universities capture the competitive benefits of the market whether private or public, the snowball effect from which is why the U.S. can spend (and therefore make) more on and in tech than Europe. The Time article is wrong to suggest that charities are going to lead the way to competetiveness with the U.S.

    Don’t forget that besides the noted difference in annual tech spending, the U.S. is also earning the off-balance-sheet sum of all the money spent on educating the european ex-pats that stay in the U.S. – and that’s gotta be huge.

  • Perhaps we in the U.S. might be more amenable to working with Euros if we were not regarded as simplistic boors, morons and gunslinging grinders of the downtrodden masses, with a huge, hegemonistic military which is just itching to invade [insert Third World paradise of choice here] to loot their blah blah blah.

    When the stated rationale for the creation of the euro currency was “to compete with the United States”, what would you expect us to do?

    When the not-so-hidden motive of crap like the Kyoto Accord is to rein in American industrial growth to enable other countries to “catch up”, why should we agree?

    We’re ALL ABOUT competition. It’s what makes us so scary to the coddled capitals of Europe, who are used to creating conditions whereby failure is unlikely — without realizing that the same constraints have an equal chance of preventing success, too.

    It’s about a WELFARE STATE: Europe has it, America doesn’t (although the gap is tragically narrowing).

    It’s about LOW TAXES: America has them, Europe doesn’t.

    It’s about government STAYING OUT OF BUSINESS: despite stupid Democrat attempts to micromanage, we’re still miles clear of Europe, California and New York state excepted.

    It’s about FREEDOM: America has it, Europe doesn’t.

    What really depresses me is that American universities are held up as these paragons of academic excellence. This may be somewhat true in the sciences, but everywhere else they’re being run by the same Marxist morons as the European ones.

    With identical results.

    As Joseph Sobran said, “Within the past fifty years, we’ve gone from teaching Greek and Latin in high school, to teaching remedial English at universities.”

    Bah.

    I’m going to have a glass of sherry. At least the Euros can still make THAT properly. So far.

  • Europes answer will of coures be a Commission for the Development of Exciting New Socially Useful Sustainable Ideas, replete with Commissioner a staff of 500 at the head office in Brussels.Each nation will have a Minister for ENSUSI with their own staff in each capital city.CENSUSI will be an equal opportunies employer and inventions would be required to reflect the multicultural make up of each nation.Tax payers money will be used to set up the Commission but income will come for industry and patent holders.Commission Inspectors will inspect all inventions and charge a fee for doing so.No invention will be permitted without the CENSUSI mark EU in a lightbulb.The International CENSUSI conference in Barbados will include UN representatives,these will denounce the unfair development by the west of ENSUSI and demand that quotas be applied.American astronauts walking on Mars laugh themselves so sick they have to be brought home.France says this serves the Americans right for not listening to Europe in the first place.

  • ATF

    Peter Bocking’s excellent suggestion, “Commission for the Development of Exciting New Socially Useful Sustainable Ideas,” might have a better chance at implementation with a less ungainly name. Permit me to suggest “Exciting New Nonnationalistic Useful Ideas.”

    That way, anyone seeing the building in Brussels with the great ENNUI sign in front would at once recognize it as a true exemplar of the EU.

  • Shawn

    This is a longish but brilliant article about the common civilisation shared by Anglosphere countries that states that the Anglosphere is a distinct civilisation seperate from continental Europe. The article has something of a libertarian/classical liberal take on the issues, so I’m sure at least a few people here may already have read it, but its worth posting the link for those that havent. It covers a lot of terroritory, including the issues discussed in this thread. I think it offers a far better strategy than simply trying to get continental Europe and the U.S. to cooperate, and it also offers a much better option for Britain than signing up to the EU. Plus it appeals to my sense of Anglo patriotism.

    Heres a taste, but its well worth reading the whole thing:

    “Over the past several years, a new term, Anglosphere, has crept into political and social discussion in the English-speaking world. This term, which can be defined briefly as the set of English-speaking, Common Law nations, implies far more than merely the sum of all persons who employ English as a first or second language. To be part of the Anglosphere requires adherence to the fundamental customs and values that form the core of English-speaking cultures. These include individualism, rule of law, honoring contracts and covenants, and the elevation of freedom to the first rank of political and cultural values.

    Nations comprising the Anglosphere share a common historical narrative in which the Magna Carta, the English and American Bills of Rights, and such Common Law principles as trial by jury, presumption of innocence, “a man’s home is his castle”, and “a man’s word is his bond” are taken for granted. Thus persons or communities who happen to communicate or do business in English are not necessarily part of the Anglosphere, unless their cultural values have also been shaped by those values of the historical English-speaking civilization.

    The Anglosphere, as a network civilization without a corresponding political form, has necessarily imprecise boundaries. Geographically, the densest nodes of the Anglosphere are found in the United States and the United Kingdom, while Anglophone regions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa are powerful and populous outliers. The educated English-speaking populations of the Caribbean, Oceania, Africa and India constitute the Anglosphere’s frontiers.

    The Anglospherist school of thought asserts that the English-speaking nations have not only formed a distinct branch of Western civilization for most of history, they are now becoming a distinct civilization in their own right. Western in origin but no longer entirely Western in composition and nature, this civilization is marked by a particularly strong civil society, which is the source of its long record of successful constitutional government and economic prosperity. The Anglosphere’s continuous leadership of the Scientific-Technological Revolution from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first century stems from these characteristics and is thus likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

    http://www.pattern.com/bennettj-anglosphereprimer.html

  • Scott

    What’s too bad, for Europe at least, is that it actually does a good job in the initial training of scientists and engineers. I have a friend whose engineer father (himself a Belgium emigre) who’ll only hire Europeans because he finds them more diligent and better trained. I’ve also been told that less Americans go for the phd, rather, they get the BS (bachelor of science degree) and then go for paying jobs right away. So, European students take up the slack.
    When another friend of mine was earning his mech e phd at a Berkely, there were several Euro students, especially German. I got an earful from them about the problems they faced in Germany. They were proudly patriotic (for Germany), but readily admitted that their future was here. Before the same fried gained tenure, there was concern that giving about giving an American tenure instead of trying to lure in another Euro scientists. So, there is high demand.
    I say the more the merrier, and merry they do seem to be working here.

  • Lisa

    Perhaps the reason immigration only goes one way to the US is because Americans are indoctrinated into believing that the rest of the world is nasty, poor and third world, so much so that we rarely leave the country. I was 30 before I managed to see anything other than Tiajuana and now, after 10 years in Europe, my opinion is, “the US is a nice place, but I don’t even like visiting anymore”.

  • The Snark Who Was Really a Boojum

    Lisa,
    ‘”To each their own!”, said the lady as she kissed the cow.’

    I’ve seen Europe and it was nice, but I’m happier in America. ^_^ People usually do a good job of knowing what they want, so I suspect that your guess is wrong where others are concerned as well. 😛

  • R. C. Dean

    Perhaps the reason immigration only goes one way to the US is because Americans are indoctrinated into believing that the rest of the world is nasty, poor and third world, so much so that we rarely leave the country.

    Speak for yourself, Lisa. I don’t think I have been indoctrinated into anything.

    Much of the watercooler/cocktail party conversation I hear about Europe is people admiring their short work schedules, “free” social safety net stuff, and sophisticated, enlightened approach to work and family. I don’t think Europe really has a bad image as a place to live and work, I think that it just doesn’t have very many good jobs that are available to immigrants.

  • For Lynn
    “I’m getting tired of all this sniping between Europe and America. We should have joint scientific labs and joint space projects. ”
    We tried this for defense (or was that Defence?) for 50 years with NATO. The end point is that today US provides the innovative deployable modern usable portion of the western world’s military, with I must add some quite respectable help from the UK, the rest of Europe freeloads. Our contribution to defense, besides providing the budgetary room to fund the generous welfare systems, is what allowed the European countries to waste money on all these goofy EURO-Bureaucracies and their wasteful unproductive projects for the past couple of decades.
    The present imbalance in medical research is another example, Europe has socialized medicine that feeds off US research for advances, while providing what is by US standards inadequate care for all who can’t afford the top-up insurance coverage.
    If we collaborated with Europe as you suggested, either one side would begin to do better, or the other would eventually do as poorly as the slower of the two. Care to guess how this would pan out? Do you want to live in a world where the speed of human progress is set by of Brussels?
    I don’t.

  • Percy Dovetonsils

    “…is because Americans are indoctrinated into believing that the rest of the world is nasty, poor and third world, so much so that we rarely leave the country.”

    Ahhh, yes, the “indoctrinated Americans” theme. My goodness, we are such mindless yokels marching in lockstep, aren’t we?

    I, for one, have lost interest in flying hours to visit a place in which I am held in such contempt. (I could fly to Berkeley (CA) and get the same attitude for much cheaper – not to mention better weather.)

    Which I do regret – I used to have much interest in seeing Britain, Germany, Malta, etc.

  • Sandy P.

    We’d love to do more things, jointly, but the frogs would sell our stuff to the highest bidder.

  • Sandy P.

    Umm, jdsm, Europe’s heading for a big fall, via econopundit:

    GOVERNMENT DEBT AND PENSION LIABILITIES AS PERCENT OF GDP (1990)
    ===net conventional debt=======net pension liabilities
    CANADA===52================121
    GERMANY==22================157
    ITALY====100================259
    UK=======27================156
    US=======35=================90
    ———————————————————————————————–
    Source: Essays on Pension Reform, Max Alier PhD Thesis, University of California LA, 1997; quoted in R.E.A. Farmer, Macroeconomics, South-Western, 2002, p. 162.

    Unfortunately, Steve doesn’t think anyone has updated the figures for 2000, but he really doesn’t think they’ve changed too much.

    And Lisa, most of the world is that way, don’t we see those images in TV all the time to fork over the cash? but you chose something closer to home, didn’t you?

    BTW, I’ve also been to Europe 4x–if you include Russia in the mix.

  • Doug Collins

    One of the biggest problems for us in the US, is that the sad state of R&D in Europe makes ours look relatively better so that we are less concerned about fixing our own problems.

    Much of our reasearch has become too institutional, with the peer review process becoming a gatekeeper for ideas rather than just a quality control mechanism. Thomas Kuhn’s idea of an accepted pardigm determining which ideas are permissible and which are verboten often appears to be operating a little too well.

    The internet and internet publishing of preliminary results is improving the situation somewhat, but the doling out of research funds by the government is still a big limitation. It’s that other golden rule: He who holds the gold, makes the rules.

  • biff

    Lynn – We already have “joint scientific labs”, it’s just that they are almost all in the United States. It is impossible to wander around laboratories at the better US universities or US industrial firms without finding scientists from Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, and, of course, India, China, the Philipines, Canada, etc. It’s just that the internationalism is self-organizing, rather than government mandated.

    Sam – Regarding Bayer, Siemens, etc., you’ll find that a very large portion of their research is based in the US or is performed in collaboration with US-based companies. For Bayer, it’s ~40% US-based. For a more dramatic example, Novartis recently moved its entire global R&D headquarters from Switzerland to Massachusetts. To be fair, though, many major US companies have significant R&D footprints in Europe (e.g. Pfizer in the UK, Abbott in Germany, etc.)

  • limberwulf

    Ive only been out of the states a couple of times, and both times still in the Western Hemisphere, but I discovered a few things in the process. 1) perceptions of Americans abroad are just as warped as our perceptions of them. One of those perceptions is that Americans are all a bunch of cocky people that think they are the only way to be and that they must be brainwashed by the Media. Another is that we are all rich. On the other hand, comparitively few of the people I met were totally warped in their perceptions of Americans, even those that havent been to the States, and I would say most Americans are the same way. People are people, and tend to judge others based on their own personal experiences.
    2) I noticed that in many cases, the businesses leaving the US for better places are doing so to avoid government intervention, taxation, and lawsuits. The places they are going do not have lower taxes, but less enforcement. Mexico, in my experience, has far more laws, and far more police, but far less action being taken in those laws, and far more corrupt politicians (at least, that is what all of the locals agreed on). The US is sadly buying into socialism as a way to “balance” capitalism, rather than realizing that capitalism is not the problem, corruption is. I only hope that we stop the slide to socialism in time to not collapse into the same ruin Europse is headed for. The world looks like something out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged.

  • B's Freak

    Dave,

    Even these state schools require private funds. I paid $40,000 for my daughter to attend the University of Maine at Farmington as an in state student.
    The company I worked for funded the development of IC test machines at the University of New Hampshire as well as biometric research at the University of Maine at Orono.
    They may be public schools but they get private monies to survive.

  • Danish Anwer

    im intested in this scholarship could me the process so im very thankful of u
    my address is Plot no 137A, Street no 5 , baghdadi, karachi ,pakistan

  • Dr. Mohammad Naser Ahammed,

    Dear sir,

    With due respect I, Dr. Mohammad Naser Ahammed, beg to state that I have completed my B.D.S. (Bachelor of Dental Surgery- 4 years of study and 1 year of internship) from Dhaka University, Bangladesh(A south-east Asian country). I have achieved the highest marks (842 out of 1250) of the university within three final professional examinations (Oct,2000; Feb,2001;Oct,2001).My Mailing Address is: Dr. Mohammad Naser Ahammed, 2-H / 10-7, Mirpur, Dhaka-1216, Bangladesh, E-mail: naser_ahammed@yahoo.com Now I am serving as a lecturer in the subject of “Orthodontics” at the same institution from where I have completed my graduation (University Dental College & Hospital).The scope of better treatment in our country is very limited. It will be a great achievement for me if I can acquire knowledge from a developed country like your’s to serve our under developed people after returning home. But it is very difficult for me to manage money for the study because, I am a member of a very poor family of one of the poorest country in the world. I am very keen to complete my post graduate study in the subject of “Orthodontics”. Would you please favour me by providing a scholarship for the post graduate study in the subject of “Orthodontics”.

    So, I would be grateful if you kindly favour me by providing a scholarship for the post graduate study in the subject of “Orthodontics” in your renowned institution making me grateful forever.
    Sincerely Yours,

    Dr. Mohammad Naser Ahammed
    Lecturer, Dept. of “Orthodontics”,
    University Dental College & Hospital.