The first American academics fleeing Donald Trump’s America for France have arrived.

Aix-Marseille University last week introduced eight U.S.-based researchers who were in the final stage of joining the institution’s “Safe Place for Science" program, which aims to woo researchers who have experienced or fear funding cuts under the Trump administration. AMU offers the promise of a brighter future in the sun-drenched Mediterranean port city.

While both France and the European Union have launched multimillion-euro plans to woo researchers across the pond since Trump assumed the U.S. presidency in January, AMU’s initiative was the first of its kind in the country — meaning the eight researchers who were welcomed are the first academic refugees planning to trade the United States for France.

  • Whelks_chance@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Cost of living is significantly lower, and the social safety net means you don’t need as much anyway.

    My gut feel is wages are so much higher in the US because everyone is responsible for looking after themselves if life turns on them, so you’re obliged to stockpile wealth in case you’re suddenly jobless or have a giant medical or education bill to contend with.

    • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      This. People can make more in the US because the country doesn’t give a fuck about it’s people. It’s like gambling the health and wellness of you and your family to horde up some Cash.

        • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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          22 hours ago

          There absolutely are. There are a lot of people at the top (not even billionaires) that are making tons of money as the working class suffer.

          • dandelion (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            20 hours ago

            we’re talking about the average person; the idea that the average person in the US is using their higher income as savings to compensate for lack of social programs is delusional imo, I think most people have significant debt and will just fall between the cracks if they lose their job or get sick and can’t work, etc.

            • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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              19 hours ago

              Sure. My point wasn’t that. My point is that there are still a not insignificant amount of people that are a part of the professional/managerial class who’s material interests align with that of the ruling capitalist class of billionaires.

              There is still a portion of “working” people that benefit enough from neoliberalism that they continue to believe that capitalism is a fair system that benefits hard work.

              • dandelion (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                17 hours ago

                sure, but it doesn’t feel particularly relevant, those people aren’t that different from less economically privileged working class folks who defend capitalism despite gaining no material benefit from doing so. The upper middle classes that align that way are still exploited in their jobs and victims of the system they align with, and that’s no different than everyone else. Division among the working classes doesn’t help our cause, and those middle upper classes would be some of the most valuable allies in cultivating change if their consciousness was raised, since they at least are not completely empty-handed. Think of people like Che Guevara who had such immense influence - he was precisely one of those middle upper class people whose consciousness was raised when he witnessed the American-backed coup in Guatemala.

                • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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                  17 hours ago

                  I mean the average person in the professional/managerial class is not Che. The entire point is to analyze it from material incentives. That is the tools of dialectical materialism that we have at our disposal.

                  The material interests of the professional class aligns with the capitalist class. I’m in that class technically. I’m a well paid software engineer that gets a large portion of my pay in stock. I’m doing well.

                  I know that my material interests are aligned with the success of capital. I have to make a conscious choice to be a class traitor and work against my own material interests. And that’s easier for me. I’m not even a manager or a landlord.

                  You’re kind of proving my point using an example like Che. He literally was educated into Marxism through personal experience throughout motorcycle diaries.

                  The average person in the professional/managerial class is not like me and definitely not like Che.

                  • dandelion (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    16 hours ago

                    Yes, but we continue to fail to communicate - I was never undermining your point about material commitments, I think that point is well-taken, it’s the conclusions you draw that I disagree with, i.e. in terms of lumping the capitalist class together with members of the working class … When I say Che Guevara was a valuable member of the revolution, it is to highlight an example of how valuable class consciousness can be from members of the working class who are more privileged but are not members of the capitalist class.

                    I wish to resist the tendency to view someone like a software engineer as equivalent to the capitalist class, just because material incentives exist. A software engineer is not a capitalist, they are working class, and the revolution is served by viewing professional and managerial workers as workers, worthy of being included and incorporated into the revolution. Not because they are that way already, I am agreeing with you by suggesting the opposite, that they aren’t aware of their status as working class because they have some material incentives, so they align with the wrong class interests.

                    The right response to this, in my opinion, is to work on raising their class consciousness, while it feels like you are suggesting the opposite (essentially lumping them together and furthering the entrenched idea that they are helplessly aligned with the capitalists and thus basically capitalists themselves).

          • Zink@programming.dev
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            21 hours ago

            Yeah. The top 1% of incomes is generally $500K - $1M depending on which site I look at.

            In the eyes of billionaires, people at that level are just poors that get paid too much to keep them humble, but with respect to regular incomes they are the rich people building investment portfolios in things like stocks and being a landlord to 5-10 units.

            • dandelion (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              20 hours ago

              focusing on income is distorting, socially and politically some of the wealthiest and most powerful people have the lowest incomes, it’s just not the best lens of evaluating power or wealth.

              • Zink@programming.dev
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                15 hours ago

                Very true. It’s like an order of magnitude difference, where 1% income is in the “approaching a million” ballpark, but 1%er net worth is above 10 million.

                But relative to the billionaires like I was talking about, they are at about the same tier of “poor person but with class,” lol.

            • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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              2 days ago

              Not really. Could be something entirely fine but requiring monthly medication. If you can’t afford that. You’re fuck.

              We have people rationing insulin in this country for Christ sake.

              • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
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                16 hours ago

                Well, sure, if we’re gonna bring in the do you have insurance factor, then it becomes a whole different game. If you don’t have insurance, I don’t even know. Death is probably imminent…

                EDIT: Who is downvoting me? Fans of American health insurance corporations? Our system is trash, why are you mad at me?

                • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  16 hours ago

                  Even with insurance. I had to take an ambulance ride once only to literally end up hanging out at the hospital with the nurses who put me on a saline drip and otherwise just chatted with me because it was a nice break, and the ambulance cost me $600 AFTER insurance.

                  The average American has less than $300 in their bank account.

                • Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml
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                  1 day ago

                  There are plenty of people whose policies get cancelled or there insurance companies refuse to cover stuff.

        • wheezy@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          For a lot of people in this country it’s hording. But I get what you mean.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Absolutely free healthcare and education are big parts of doing more with less, and quality of life.
      But it’s also easier to buy a house or apartment, and quality food is cheaper, and paid holidays and on and on.
      We have so many privileges Americans don’t have it’s crazy.

    • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      While that is true, academic wages are still laughably low in Europe, even compared to wages here.

      You can earn more after 5 years in the industry than as a full professor in academia. We should pay academics more.

    • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I agree, but don’t forget that every year, things get harder because everything is trying to find more ways to take that extra money from you. From schools, companies, and government they are all figuring out ways to come up with new mandatory requirements for stuff that normally ends up being a new fee or payment on top of what you used to need. For example when you are in school, you probably need way more certifications in things which costs more money either by a 1 time fee or sometimes yearly fees and a lot of this never existed 20-30 years ago. I feel like we pay for literally everything, and it all keeps going up as well. It’s hard to get ahead when everyone wants a piece of your pie.