I am a big fan of Pod Saves America--the Obama Bros podcast. Yet they annoyed me greatly today. Yes, they are rightly upset that the GOP tax "reform" is going to raise heaps of taxes on graduate students. But, no, it is not just about physicists and engineers. Tommy Vietor must be too sleep deprived due to his new puppy (understanble) when he said that this is not about Philosophy doctorates. Dude, the social sciences and humanities are important too.
Yeah, I rail against having too many PhDs produced and I love picking on philosophers, but changing the tax code to screw over grad students hurts not just the STEM folks who get all of the love, but everyone one. As Neil Degrasse Tyson reminds us with some of his incredibly dumb tweets, to do hard science right, we need the social sciences and humanities.
The GOP tax "reform" plan is short-sighted in a number of ways--gutting the hard sciences may be more obvious and more politically marketable, but the rest of the disciplines matter. So, yeah, not good, Tommy and pals, not good.
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