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Comment by lhnz | Hacker News Reader

Is it really likely that Oxford, Cambridge and other Russell Group universities are no longer going to be allowed to do Science alongside European universities?

Is Theresa May and the conservative government against investing in Science?

It seems to me that most of this is is just knee-jerking, and it's likely that there are quite a few people who will work to ensure that things continue to work as they should.

Edit: That University Ranking chart posted earlier says it all really. The US and UK dominate the charts - you don't see EU universities until page two. This is just a few people cutting their noses off to spite their face.

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They'll of course be allowed to do the research - the question is who is going to pay for it as much of the funding comes from the EU.

EU money doesn't come out of thin air. It comes from taxpayers. The UK is a net contributor to the EU so the UK government could choose to fund all current commitments and still be better off.

Except for...revenues are not going to stay the same.

For example, George Osborne has just proposed to slash the corp. tax rate from 20% to 15%, in order reduce (not eliminate) the almost certain reduction in UK investment.

Last year, CT net receipts were £ 42 billion[1]. At the current 20% rate. At 15%, that would be £ 31.5 billion, for a reduction of £ 10.5 billion. Let's divide that by 52 weeks and you get £ 200 million. Which happens to be £ 10 million more than the UK's net contribution to the EU budget.

So all your "savings" just evaporated just with corporation tax alone, and that's assuming that Osborne's plan works and there is no reduction in activity/investment, which is dubious.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

It isn't that simple. There isn't a linear relationship between the tax % and the revenue to the treasury. Lower taxes encourage more companies to set up in the UK.

We saw this recently in the UK when the top rate of income tax was raised to 50% and the income to the treasury actually fell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

As I wrote, the tax cuts are being proposed to compensate for lower investment due to brexit, and it is unclear whether they will be able to compensate fully.

Ok but the numbers you quoted assumed a linear relationship.

In no way is it "almost certain" that investment in the UK will decrease. The evidence currently suggests the complete opposite. Look at the performance of the FTSE100 since the referendum to see the flood of foreign investment coming into the UK listed companies thanks to the weaker currency.

I'd also point out that decreasing tax rates is the exact opposite of what the chancellor said he would do before the referendum.

They had already announced rates were going down to 17% so it's only another 2%. This is a tax that is very difficult to collect and becoming more so over time.

The UK is a net contributor to the EU so the UK government could choose to fund all current commitments and still be better off.

As another commenter has posted [1], this had already been debunked in December last year [2]:

This claim is based on the UK being a “net contributor” to the EU budget as a whole. The size of that net contribution varies, but according to analysis [..] about 0.6% of nominal GDP. Models of impact to the UK economy on Brexit vary. [..] even the more optimistic assessments of the UK’s economic performance following a Brexit [..] model an immediate loss in GDP for the transition years following a Brexit. The size of that loss is substantially larger than the current net contribution of the UK to the EU budget.

[Brexit] is a sure-fire short term loss, wiping any free money for R&I investment until at least a decade down the line – according to the most optimistic scenarios.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12081215

[2] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-m...

Knee-jerk or not, the UK should expect retaliation, even when it disadvantages both parties. This referendum (even its existence let alone result) is driving in a wedge that will take decades to reach full effect, let alone remove. Leavers say "Sure, that's expected, but we'll be stronger once all that has died down." Remainers, like myself, do not.

My impression was that Germany does some cool science, too and participates in many European and international research projects.

See for example the Mac Planck Gesellschaft: https://www.mpg.de/en

Germany would be dumb to quit the European science cooperation.

https://www.mpg.de/europe

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