"John W." <worthj1970@yahoo.com> wrote in message

>  > A lot of French researchers end up migrating to the US, as they have
>  > no other choice (no other way to get a financial support).
>  >
> I've heard that's true in Japan as well. IIRC until a short while ago
> Japanese companies didn't give to university researchers like in the US.

That's true about all the world. The US government is the only one that's
able to guarantee a steady income to a large number of companies that invest
in research. So, maintaining the war machine serves at least for something.

I was disappointed by Europe because of that. The European policy for
research was supposed to create the first non-military dynamic for research
since....since prehistory probably. But well, that was a total failure. The
situation is now worse than it was before 15 yrs ago. I hope it's just a
temporary accident. Certainly the number of European people able to become
professional researchers is larger than ever. But well, that's tough to
survive after the old system has collapsed and before the new one gets in
place. My cousin is not really what you'd call a researcher but faced
similar problems. She is an archeologist, and there are no chances  private
companies hire archeologists, give them means to work and pay them a salary,
unless there is a public intervention. The budget for her job was suddenly
cut, her position suppressed, so she and all her coworkers became
"half-employed, half-student" for about 3 years, till they were re-hired. A
little more, and they had nobody to rehire as they all considered changing
of career (as the US doesn't take specialists of Etrusque art or Burgundy's
medieval architecture). For other fields of research, there were similar
crisis so people moved...

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