Then why are millions moving to the US every year?
> In 2025, only 2.6 million people immigrated to the United States, a sharp decline from the 5.8 million who entered in 2023 and the 4.6 million who entered in 2024.
source: https://forumtogether.org/article/the-consequences-of-net-ne...
Yes, there are still people migrating to the USA, but it is a lot less than it used to be.
Key finding: "We conclude that net migration was likely close to zero or negative over calendar year 2025 for the first time in at least half a century. For 2026, we project net migration is likely to remain in negative territory."
I personally am still very bullish on living in America compare compared to a lot of places, but it's getting harder to ignore the stresses and costs of living here compared to the money that once made this place worth it
The world doesn’t operate the way we want it to, and US salaries are head and shoulders above what you can get anywhere else in the world. That’s what people really care about, and not the news cycle surrounding the current administration.
Then why is it cold outside??
(Bias disclosure: grew up in norcal, moved to Europe from California in 2013. I like living here but it certainly wasn't great for my career. It's like living in a forgotten backwater. You watch the future being built from abroad.)
If your information doesn't have those error bars it is just a feel good headline to make someone feel better about themselves by putting others down - this is EVIL and you shouldn't fall for it!
The idea that the US is "the best place to live" is a persistent cultural myth. It's mostly good for a lot of classes of people, but even that's changing as of late.
But would everyone except for "obscenely rich people" be better off somewhere else? If so, then where, and why aren't they leaving by the tens of millions for those places?
Maybe smart folks don't want to be in racist xenophobic regime which marks them as undesirables from Day 1, run by publicly voted-in outright senile pedophile who managed to insult every single human being currently living at least once, mostly much more. It happens with narcistic egomaniacs, quite a lot in fact.
Since folks willingly voted in such person twice as the best person under the sun to represent and rule them, it tells something not-so-nice about future that even many not-too-smart folks catch easily.
At least that would be my logic if I would be in such situation. I never was since US was never an option for me, Switzerland offers much more for me than US ever could. And my taxes are not used for mass murder and start failed wars half around the globe, a small but significant detail. Most scientists have more morals than typical faaangs of these days from my experience.
QoL in the US is better if you are an average to above earner, and dramatically better if you are are high earner (like SWE's). In large part why the US brain drained so much talent from Europe over the last 30 years.
If you're barely making ends meet, can barely afford gas, and hear that $390,000 just went to some scientists to stick plastic dinosaur tails on chickens to study walking dynamics, with zero practical applications for the knowledge gained, you're angry. Also this example actually happened, it's not hyperbole.
Again, if you are someone who can barely afford gas and hear about this... you don't care about strict principles, you just want to set those in power on fire. You're also not going to be easily convinced the government cares about spending your tax dollars wisely, or that all of this planning and research and science is worth it.
"What kind of IDIOT wants to WASTE valuable TAXPAYER MONEY on gila monster venom research" - man currently on a GLP-1.
https://www.cnrs.fr/en/update/choose-cnrs-opportunities-scie...
https://www.heartaerospace.com/newsroom/mastering-the-shift-...
A month later they moved to USA
https://www.heartaerospace.com/newsroom/heart-aerospace-relo...
Eagerly recruiting doesn't translate to active recruitment imo, unfortunately. With the coming elections, it is even more tenuous.
Four years of this is a huge blow to the field, eight would mean a wipeout of a generation of talent.
The entire administration has done one thing: sell of all of the US's assets, and convert it into profits for the trump family. thats it. Every action taken since the first 40 executive actions signed, through doge, defunding USAID which murdered over a million children, or bombing Iranian schools, has been to enrich trump and his friends.
Thats it. It's very simple.
They traded away every piece of soft power they could find and exchanged it for cash in their pockets.
While government funding may not grow above previous levels I would posit this is actually a feature - I’d expect to see a better public / private blend that is more resilient.
Top Astrophysicist Leaves U.S. After Trump Policies Affect Her Work
There's no longer a point in receiving academic training in the United States because no one will trust it. A prospective scientist won't want to define their research by hedging against zionism and fascism. I don't have an extensive publication list but I would rather not publish anything if I have to give Israel and Nazi's a seat at the table for every research project.
No, not really. I mean, we potentially could, but not with the state of education as it is -- the top career goals for US highschoolers are athlete, youtuber, musician, actor... they want fame and fortune. And why shouldn't they, that's what America tells them is important.
Then, we load those who do go to college with so much debt, graduate education is not financially possible for most of them. Careers in research require higher degrees and a decade of study, it's just not worth it when you have $50k-$100k in debt upon graduating, and a graduate stipend is like $2k a month.
At my university, we fill our masters and PhD ranks with international students. Even if we admitted 100% of the domestic students who apply each year, we wouldn't have a full cohort. And if we did do that, and they all did attend, the 15 other schools they applied to would fall short.
Of course, now the goalposts have moved: American talent must be worse because they don’t have these degrees which are required of foreign students to get in the country. And, of course, grad school working conditions are notably terrible. Exploitable labor lowers working conditions.
Not actually though, most reasonable people know that the only solution out will be war and massive restructuring.
I was pretty astounded and heartbroken watching my colleagues pass around a list of banned words so they could scrub their proposals. Then again, what options do they have? Either you get money from the government, corporations who have a very narrow idea of what they want to research, or you move to a country that takes research seriously.
The right was so concerned about what you couldn't say because it maybe damaged your credibility. But what we're having now is that same group doing find and replace cuts on grants that use a laundry list of banned words.
Timothy Snyder put out a great book about this called "On Freedom", which explains most of the power an autocrat has is given freely by people who anticipate what he would want and just offer it without being asked, precisely because they have a notion that resistance is futile. Tech leaders were right there at the inauguration, they didn't even try! So the role these tech guys played early on was teaching Trump the extend of his power.
If you look at how Trump handled schools and law firms, you see an excellent case of capitulation vs. resistance and how that played out. Take the situation with Columbia compared to Harvard. With Columbia, they capitulated to Trump illegally withheld $400m and agreed to all sorts of demands, only to be met with more demands. Harvard faced similar pressure, but decided to fight it and won in court.
In the law world, Trump made demands to several high-profile law firms. Paul Weiss, Skadden, and Kirkland & Ellis all capitulated to the demands, other firms saw these law firms capitulate and just offered up settlements themselves. 11 law firms entered into agreements with the administration, and they didn't even have to ask all of them! Meanwhile, every firm that challenged demands made by the Trump admin, including Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block, won in court.
Tech giants didn't capitulate to the Trump administration because they felt they had no other choice, they did it because they felt it would be best for their bottom line. They have no principles, no backbone, and are opportunists who will say anything if a dollar is on the line.
5calls.org
Figuring out the right amount of justice-seeking versus forgiveness is the top point of argument right now among the newly elected dominant party.
You want to toss your vote in the "let's just move on" bucket?