Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it. Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
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Greg Mello and the LANL study group has shown that the labs create all the poverty in New Mexico and add no economic value. The people at the labs do not come from New Mexico, they do not spend money, and they cause the state to be addicted to lab money. Think about it, New Mexico is number 1 in poverty and number 1 in nuclear weapons. Proof that the labs have no impact on the economy is that if take the labs away New Mexico as it would still be number one in poverty.
"Proof"? No, just garbage. You can believe whatever you want, but NM state economic numbers disagree with you. So do most economists in NM. Mello is just an ancient, crusty hater of LANL. Nothing more. He has no credibility outside Santa Fe.
The Los Alamos study groups gets lots of things wrong but one thing the really miss the mark on is the most basic understanding of economics. They have this one guy called Eric Kuershner who is like economics version of a flat earther. Just like a flat earth advocate he seems to know a few terms but has no clue at all about the subject. His arguments against the lab go something like below.
Not only are the labs wasteful but they also cause poverty on the moon. Look you can see the moon from New Mexico and there are no jobs on the moon, nothing productive is done on the moon because of economic inequality. Eric Kuershner has pointed out the economic link between the existence of LANL and poverty on the moon. In order to decrease poverty on the moon and New Hampshire they should burn money in Nova Scotia since money is like jelly beans and Eric says this was understood even by Keynes as far back as 1934 but no later than 1935. It is disgusting but more than that it is confusing. Dr Kueshner....oops I mean Mr Kuersherner knows economics!!!! Free Taos and Free the Moon, by cutting funding for Los Alamos and Sandia. You can say what you want about Mr Kuershner but he sure is no PhD in economics.
5/01/2021 5:14 PM
What makes you think that he has credibility in Santa Fe? A little biased, are you?
5/03/2021 6:02 PM
In terms of New Mexico probably not. Intel is a private organization and has to deliver to make profit therefore a large portion of any new work force at this expansion will be coming from outside of the state. In fact any real economic expansion in New Mexico will have to be driven by bringing in outside workers. This will have some benefit to New Mexico but does not create all these new jobs that New Mexicans can do. It may sound cynical but the labs produce way more jobs for in state people than any high tech company. The labs also get billions of dollars every year but unlike Intel do not have to produce nearly as much and are not driven by the bottom line. As such they can create thousands of fairly useless jobs (overhead) that can be filled by anyone. In fact at LANL Mason was bragging about how the large expansion of the workforce will not require college degrees, etc. In other words lab money will directly to the local workforce much more than any Intel money.