Shut 'em Down!

Being a 40-yr old scientist sucking from the teat of government largess, it appears there are two choices ahead: either government shuts down now and I'll have to go without pay for a few weeks, or a compromise is reached with the Tea Party radicals which will embolden them to propose cuts to the budgets for the next howevermany years that are even deeper than Paul Ryan's (this is how they operate, we all know it). That means that for at least the next 5 years, grant paylines will be so low it'll be almost impossible to get funding if you're not an older, more established scientist with a large lab and lots of resources already.

The first option is cruel to people currently requiring government money, but it might just convince people how crazy the Tea Partiers are. The second option is devastating for a generation of scientists who spent the last 15-20 years living in poverty relative to their peers who did not enter science (because of the relatively long education time and the relatively low postdoctoral pay). These next 20 years were planned to be the time when we could increase our savings and catch up to where everyone else has already been all this time. Without a decent chance at funding, we'll have to leave the field, spend the next 10 years losing ground again, and then, in 25 - 30 years, when it comes time to retire, we will have our Medicare and our Social Security taken away from us.

So, in the words of Public Enemy, I say: