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The best quote I've ever read about that was "Why become a physicist, when you can be his boss?" Can't find the source anymore.

With no universal healthcare, no free higher education, very little social safety net and a raft of other holes in society to fall through, America is the poster child of “F$$k everyone else, I got mine”

People have to behave this way just to survive.

Lack of adequate STEM education in US schools --> more liberal arts majors --> more MBAs --> low value for engineering fundamentals and higher value for financialization --> Oh crap, MBAs can't send stuff to space?

There are an enormous number of physicists who can't find jobs now, the systemic problems are much deeper than that. In fact, I would posit that the "low standards" of highschool STEM relative to countries like India are actually due to the extraordinarily high fraction of our kids we push in that direction.