Salary of a Scientist vs. Salary of the President

Contrast if you please, on one hand, the $400,000 annual salary that an ignorant jerk with no education like Donald Trump makes, he who spends more time watching TV and playing golf than actually running the country, and on the other hand the salary of someone like astronaut Suni Williams which ranges somewhere between 100,000 and 155,000, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s 2024 GS Pay Table for the Houston area where NASA’s Johnson Space Center is based.

Granted that, according to the MAGA buffalo herd, Suni is an obvious DEI hire: She's a woman and she's a "darkie" with uncontrollable frizzy hair. She's also a "minority" because she is not pure "white". So I am sure that when she was hired, there were many worthier white male candidates, but NASA must have reluctantly hired her to satisfy the DEI rules which Musk and Trump are eliminating. She should be offered early retirement or face being fired, and since she was born to immigrant parents, she's probably a "birthright" American who should be stripped of her US citizenship and deported.

In the US, if you are half black, half white, then you're automatically labeled black, because your whiteness has been premanently stained. It might take you 8 generations of breeding with whites to rid your genome of the "dark" genetic baggage. I imagine Elon Musk and Donald Trump working on seeking ways to fire Suni because she is a DEI hire.

Now to be a president in the US you do not need any education. You could be an illiterate uneducated thug from the street, and you could become president of the US if you manage to make yourself popular. This is in contrast to most countries around the world that require a candidate for the top job to be educated with a universitty degree. But in the US, education is considered a "nerdy" pursuit, which explains in large part why Trump and his MAGA morons are about to dismantle and shut down the Department of Education. 

Americans in general are not a well-educated bunch, and it is only thanks to educated immigrants with advanced degrees that the US makes advances in science and technology: The US just uses money to entice the smartest and brightest of other countries to bring their skills to the brain-deprived US, which then claims them as its own. Until, that is, Donald Trump, blinded by his xenophobia and racism is now humiliating, expelling, jailing deporting them, and denying them funding - because the asshole does not believe in Science - and many are already packing to move their research to Canada, Europe, and even China and India. 

Remember the argument between Musk, Ramaswamy and Bannon on the H-1B visa? Musk and Ramaswamy, both of whom arrived to the US on H-1B visas, defended the visa, but nativist imbeciles like chronically unwashed Bannon and MAGA bimbo star Marjorie Taylor Greene decried it.

For more, check: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-born-stem-workers-united-states

Speaking of India, NASA astronaut Sunita Lyn "Suni" Williams herself is the child of of Indian immigrant parents with the last name of Pandya. She and Butch Wilmore are the two astronauts who just splashed their way back to Earth after being stranded for 9 months in the International Space Station. 

Compared to the grueling studies that scientists in general, and astronauts in particular, have to pursue, and the long years of preparation and training, the fact that they make three-four  times less of a salary than the president is astounding. Particularly when the president is a full fledged moron, a term many of his associates and collaborators end up calling him when they slam the door on their way out. Trump  was born with a silverspoon in his mouth, thanks to his wealthy daddy who pulled "strings" to shield his son (i.e. dodge the draft) from having to serve in Vietnam along with the millions of "losers and suckers" who served and the 50,000 who died there.

The average American makes an average of about $59,200 per year.

 

Unlike your average American, the president doesn't have to pay rent or pay for help around the house or for transportation. He is granted free lodging in the White House with his family as well as a full retinue of servants, cooks, footmen, maids, valets and groundskeepers. The president doesn't have to pay for health care either.

Astronauts do not get any overtime pay for being stranded on the ISS. There is no built-in compensation in their contract for the risks and dangers they run. "While in space, NASA astronauts are on official travel orders as federal employees, so their transportation, lodging, and meals are provided,” the statement continued. “They also are on long-term TDY, and receive the incidentals amount for each day they are in space. The incidentals amount is reduced by the percentage required for the length of the trip per federal travel regulations.”  Astronauts fall under the General Schedule (GS) 12-13 pay grade level. according to FederalPay.org,  “This grade is given to high level scientists with advanced degrees/training,” said the website. “Astronauts have Ph.D’s and a lot of specialized training, so they qualify for one of these two grades.” For the 286 days that Wilmore and Wiliams spent in space, they receive "incidentals" at the rate of $4 a day, or a total of $1,144 in addition to their salary.