Trump's Second Term

[TomB]

I think that's what Musk desires us to think. Whether it's possible to carry out effective cancer research with only 15% indirect costs is something someone would have to decide who has worked in that sector for many years and who has a long memory of normal variations across administrations. That would not be Elon Musk or any of his squeaky-voiced programmers. Musk has a demonstrated inability to know which jobs are critical.

I have no idea why the caps were previously so high.


It is. And I wonder how much of these "efficiency" cuts would be obviated by applying a 2% tax on wealth.


It will be too late when Americans realize that these cuts they supposedly want will come from vital services.

Actually, the ~25% numbers people have mentioned seem rather low, based on my experience. I think the project I was PI on a several years ago had indirect costs of around 39%. Not cancer or healthcare related, but enough to give me some perspective.

Usually an organization or university has an indirect cost rate that they charge for all clients. These are included in the bid, so if the indirect costs are excessive, the bid will not be competitive.

So what does indirect costs pay for? I don't really know how it's calculated. It probably varies from organization to organization. Some things covered by indirect costs at one place may be directly itemized at another. The most obvious things would be things like facility maintenance, utilities, Janitorial service, IT, etc. And, of course, you have your administrative services: personnel, purchasing, and other support staff.

For a lab, it may include overhead to operate and maintain equipment. It's not cheap keeping lab instruments running. Service contracts can run $10-15k/year per instrument. (And those can pay for themselves very quickly.) Some places may include that type of thing in their indirect costs. There are rules as to what can be charged to a grant. And then rules as to what equipment purchased with one grant can be used on the next grant. One project cannot subsidize another.

Anyway, capping the indirect cost rate is not likely to actually save any money at all, in my opinion. Bids and proposals will just be written differently. For example, instead of lumping IT into overhead, I suspect that the IT charges and fees will instead be itemized as a direct cost. The way this would work is that the IT department would charge the grant a fee for IT service. Similar things would likely be done with facilities overhead.

Is 50% indirect costs excessive? I really don't know. Like I said, I don't know how it's calculated, just what I have and have not seen as line items on grants. It would probably depend on the nature of the research. When I think about medical research, I tend to think in terms of a lab. And the major lab instruments cost $100,000-$300,000. I know of one lab that spent, as I recall, around $300,000 for the instrument to analyze for PFAS. Lab instruments and the lab buildings themselves create indirect expenses that aren't present in, say an engineering or architecture firm designing a building or a bridge.

 

[steenkh]

Whenever Trump or Musk targets a U.S. agency they claim that these are criminal organisations and all the payments are fraud. Has a single case been passed on to be prosecuted?

 

[angrysoba]

Whenever Trump or Musk targets a U.S. agency they claim that these are criminal organisations and all the payments are fraud. Has a single case been passed on to be prosecuted?

Probably best not to give them ideas.

I expect that they are using the term hyperbolically. These people think nothing of referring to their personal enemies as pedophiles or criminals, despite Trump actually being a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.

 

[steenkh]

Probably best not to give them ideas.

I expect that they are using the term hyperbolically. These people think nothing of referring to their personal enemies as pedophiles or criminals, despite Trump actually being a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.

Maybe they also regard the courts as part of a criminal system. After all, it was a court that convicted Trump.
Next, DOGE will be unleashed, and judges and prosecutors will have to pass a loyalty test to retain their job.

Putin has complete control of the courts, why shouldn’t Trump go for it?

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

i don’t think these capitalists are proving to be any more competent than the communists. when i look at all the problems the us is facing, what’s caused them, and who’s stopping anyone from taking action to solve them, there’s rich guys paying lobbyists to do all of it.

and i don’t see anything happening now that’s going to end up helping anyone. firing half the government and taking all the money isn’t going to make my life better. if anything…

The capitalists were the communists back in the day. The USSR didn't die from a lack of capitalism, bur a surfeit of it.

 

[lionking]

It's really not, but this is not the thread for that discussion.

You are also being (unintentionally) misleading. The NCAA says 10. There should be zero as the NCAA should only allow athletes to compete according to their sex at birth. As has most sporting bodies.

I’m talking about the non-elite level where men compete in women’s events and women are indeed hurt in contact sports.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Elon accusing Samantha Power, Biden’s ex-USAID chief of corruption and stealing millions of dollars.

It's what he does, so he can't imagine others not doing the same.

Edit: This is the person making the complaint originally, Mario Nawfal.

 

[a_unique_person]

I just saw on TwiX (so take it for what it's worth) that The POSOTUS is ending new minting of the penny. Seems to be legit but we'll see. There is nothing so outrageous or silly coming from him that I'd think it wasn't true. I predict a lot of hoarding if it is.
But that dolt has probably never spent or even held a penny in his life. I wouldn't be surprised if he suggests minting a new (legal tender) coin with his face on it. Of course, for that to happen he'd have to be dead, but I'm ok with that.

That's actually the only thing that makes sense. Inflation has made small denomination coins a liability. The reason no one has suggested before is that the Conservative Republicans are inherently conservative and the Democrats would be crucified if they even suggested it.

 

[a_unique_person]

All I've seen so far is that Musk is capping the indirect costs at 15%. That's draconian, but not wildly so. I don't see where he's capping or cutting direct costs. My company's indirect costs run around 20% of budget, but are a bit higher this year because we're building out two new physical facilities. We're paying architects and construction companies. But the tweet is puzzling. The claim is that 60% of of research grants is being spent on overhead. These appear to be the rate caps. $9B out of $35B appears to be the actual expenditure, and works out to a little more than 25%.

I was trying to figure out the maths. I'm not an accountant so I don't know if there is some accounting slight of hand happening here.

 

[The Don]

Actually, the ~25% numbers people have mentioned seem rather low, based on my experience. I think the project I was PI on a several years ago had indirect costs of around 39%. Not cancer or healthcare related, but enough to give me some perspective.

Usually an organization or university has an indirect cost rate that they charge for all clients. These are included in the bid, so if the indirect costs are excessive, the bid will not be competitive.

So what does indirect costs pay for? I don't really know how it's calculated. It probably varies from organization to organization. Some things covered by indirect costs at one place may be directly itemized at another. The most obvious things would be things like facility maintenance, utilities, Janitorial service, IT, etc. And, of course, you have your administrative services: personnel, purchasing, and other support staff.

For a lab, it may include overhead to operate and maintain equipment. It's not cheap keeping lab instruments running. Service contracts can run $10-15k/year per instrument. (And those can pay for themselves very quickly.) Some places may include that type of thing in their indirect costs. There are rules as to what can be charged to a grant. And then rules as to what equipment purchased with one grant can be used on the next grant. One project cannot subsidize another.

Anyway, capping the indirect cost rate is not likely to actually save any money at all, in my opinion. Bids and proposals will just be written differently. For example, instead of lumping IT into overhead, I suspect that the IT charges and fees will instead be itemized as a direct cost. The way this would work is that the IT department would charge the grant a fee for IT service. Similar things would likely be done with facilities overhead.

Is 50% indirect costs excessive? I really don't know. Like I said, I don't know how it's calculated, just what I have and have not seen as line items on grants. It would probably depend on the nature of the research. When I think about medical research, I tend to think in terms of a lab. And the major lab instruments cost $100,000-$300,000. I know of one lab that spent, as I recall, around $300,000 for the instrument to analyze for PFAS. Lab instruments and the lab buildings themselves create indirect expenses that aren't present in, say an engineering or architecture firm designing a building or a bridge.

A simple percentage of costs as indirect costs is a very blunt tool and not necessarily a useful one.

As you point out, it's highly dependent on what is classed as indirect costs, not least on how shared expenses are apportioned across projects and funding sources.

It's also presumably highly dependent on the kind of research being performed.

 

[a_unique_person]

Actually, the claim is about 26% of NIH funding ($9 billion out of $35 billion) is spent on overhead. If overhead is capped at 15%, that would represent a saving of about $5 billion a year. I presume Musk would like to cut the NIH funding by that amount. Presumably the lost money would be made up for by reducing infrastructure costs rather than cutting the research itself. I'm not in a position to say that's possible.

Of note, in 2022 Americans spent $112 billion on alcoholic beverages, $82 billion on tobacco, and $110 billion on coffee. Given the enormous size of the US economy, $5 billion is a drop in the bucket.

In addition, it will take a lot of $5 billion amounts to get to Trump's target of reducing government expenditures by a trillion dollars a year. That won't happen without really serious cuts.

I assume bleeding edge research would usually have high overheads. Someone like Musk should know that. Unless he expects all researchers are going to work like slaves in primitive facilities and release products that don't work.

 

[AmyStrange]

A simple percentage of costs as indirect costs is a very blunt tool and not necessarily a useful one.

As you point out, it's highly dependent on what is classed as indirect costs, not least on how shared expenses are apportioned across projects and funding sources.

It's also presumably highly dependent on the kind of research being performed.

Well, I don't know if this'll help any, but here's something from a place I worked at (the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center):

Financial Summaries & Impact Reporting

Fred Hutch is transparent and accountable to the public and provides key financial information including annual reports, audited financial statements and a letter of 501(c)3 tax-exempt status.

www.fredhutch.org

-

 

[Pixel42]

You are also being (unintentionally) misleading. The NCAA says 10. There should be zero as the NCAA should only allow athletes to compete according to their sex at birth. As has most sporting bodies.

I’m talking about the non-elite level where men compete in women’s events and women are indeed hurt in contact sports.

There are millions of females of all ages competing in sports in the US, any of whom could at some point lose a medal to/lose a record to/be injured by a male once there are no longer any such things as female only sports leagues. That's the number of people who would be affected by it, and we wouldn't know how big it is for decades.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Early purchasers made lots of money. Some of them are in China. 810,000 later purchasers have lost a combined $2 billion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/us/politics/trump-crypto-memecoin.html

Over 80% was already allocated before the coin was released, 'Insiders' made the most.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Trump has said he will announce a 25% import tax on all steel and aluminium entering the US.

He also said that there would be an announcement later in the week about reciprocal tariffs on all countries that tax imports from the US.

"If they charge us, we charge them,"

Donald Trump says he will announce tariffs on steel and aluminium

Imports of the metals will be hit with a 25% levy, a move that will have the biggest impact in Canada.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[The Great Zaganza]

that's going to help with the housing crisis ...

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Exactly. He is meddling in something that should be no concern of his.

I honestly think that there is a problem with transgender athletes, but that is only a part of the bigger problem of what to do about athletes that have abnormal levels of hormones, or indeterminate biological gender. But that should be left to the competent organisations, and not politics.

Yes, an awful lot of homphobes think that they can use trans athletes as a wedge issue to unperson all trans people, and go on from there.

 

[The Don]

Trump has said he will announce a 25% import tax on all steel and aluminium entering the US.

He also said that there would be an announcement later in the week about reciprocal tariffs on all countries that tax imports from the US.

"If they charge us, we charge them,"

Donald Trump says he will announce tariffs on steel and aluminium

Imports of the metals will be hit with a 25% levy, a move that will have the biggest impact in Canada.

www.bbc.co.uk

The irony....it burns.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Probably best not to give them ideas.

I expect that they are using the term hyperbolically. These people think nothing of referring to their personal enemies as pedophiles or criminals, despite Trump actually being a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.

They look at what they themselves do, and can't imagine anybody else not doing exactly the same.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Although I am Kate fan rather than pro-Meghan; you are right. He shouldn't have picked on Meghan, it is misogynist and probably racist. like most women, I am far more judgemental about other women than men, who are inevitably going to be pathetic disappointments entirely dependent on a good woman to make something of them.

Not to mention there are a lot of us who are disinterested in or opposed to the whole royal soap opera but can feel a degree of sympathy for them because of the amount of hate they receive, much of it due to horrendously bias reporting.