How the U.S. Sequester Will Hurt Science and Tech

Later today, the U.S. government will enter the sequestration process, a series of across-the-board budget cuts put into place automatically because U.S. politicians are bad at agreeing on things. "At that moment, somewhere in the bowels of the Treasury Department, officials will take offline the computers that process payments for school construction and clean energy bonds to reprogram them for reduced rates. Payments will be delayed while they are made manually for the next six weeks." The cuts will directly affect science- and tech-related spending throughout the country. Tom Levenson writes, '[s]equester cuts will strike bluntly across the scientific community. The illustrious can move a bit of money around, but even in large labs, a predictable result will be a reduction in the number of graduate student and post – doc slots available — and as those junior and early-stage researchers do a whole lot of the at-the-bench level research, such cuts will have an immediate effect on research productivity. The longer term risk is obvious too: fewer students and post-docs mean on an ongoing drop from baseline in the amount of work to be done year over year.' The former director of the National Institute of Health says it will set back medical science for a generation. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has laid out how the cuts will affect the U.S. space program. He said, "The Congress wasn’t able to do what they were supposed to do, so we’re going to suffer." The sequester will also prevent billions of dollars from flowing into the tech industry. This comes at a time when there's a pressing need in the tech sector for professionals versed in the use of Linux, and salaries for those workers are on the rise.

The one coin to rule them all

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Where is the quadrillion dollar platinum coin? We need it now!

Sequestration is like weight loss

[idontgno]

Percentage-wise, we're shaving off about 8%:

Broadly speaking, for 2013 the across-the-board cuts will mean about an 8.4 percent cut in most affected non-defense discretionary programs, a 7.5 percent cut in affected defense programs, an 8.0 percent cut in affected mandatory programs other than Medicare, and a 2.0 percent cut in Medicare provider payments.

By an eerie coincidence, you can lose 8% of your body weight by decapitating yourself [answers.com]:

An adult human cadaver head cut off around vertebra C3, with no hair, weighs on average somewhere between 4.5 and 5 kg, typically constituting around 8% of the body mass.

Re:And Yet...

[msauve]

"set back medical science for a generation".

He's counting fruit fly generations, obviously.

Re:Total BS

[fustakrakich]

Follow the money.

Woo Hoo! Cayman Islands, here I come!