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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/opinion/why-trumps-nih-cuts-should-worry-us.html?_r=0

Harold Varmus has written a decent opinion piece on he proposed budget cuts to NIH. Gives a good overview of how NIH budget works with federal appropriations. [/quote]

More of the same.
"Junior scientists, already struggling in a highly competitive atmosphere, may not get a chance to have an academic career. 
Senior investigators might need to lay off staff, disrupting research teams and leaving projects unfinished."

NIH doubled the budget in late 1990-s. It has marginally helped the biomedical Ph.D employment for a few years, then it became a lot worse once the increases stopped.
Why would it differ this time? Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity as we know.

In contrast, there is no National Institute for Financial Research or National Institute for Legal Studies awarding postdoctoral grants and awards to 
new business Ph.D and J.D and young faculty in business and law schools. Somehow those "junior scientists" start their academic careers just fine, 
in fact they are commonly fought over by multiple schools at 100K+ assistant professor salaries right after Ph.D with no postdoc.

Why is that the case? Largely exactly because there is no NI... to fund the "training" of graduate students and postdocs in the field 
beyond the demand of real economy. People are self-funded (which they would not do without a strong chance for a lucrative job),
paid by the departments as TA (with few limited spots based on real educational demand), or sponsored by employer based on real need for that qualification.
If an external entity stimulates the supply by funding the "training", the product price is permanently depressed - this is basic economics.
But they think the solution is to put even more money into supply. 
That is what NIH grant PIs do: fund more students and postdocs (NIH does not pay to create more tenure-track academic positions).

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