UCLA has a $10B endowment. I find it bollocks that they and these other academic institutions can't just dip into that for their researchers to (hopefully) ride out the current funding situation at a minimum.
It's not bollocks, the endowments are contributions that have constraints on their spending. They cannot legally redirect much of the endowment towards these researchers in the way you want. Instead, they use the endowment as an investment that produces interest which is spent on operating expenses.
No endowment grows over time to infinity; that's hyperbole (and impossible).
The tax-free status - that's definitely something that could be changed by updating the laws (legislative). That sounds a lot better than the executive division starving UCLA of funds.
- Infinity is not a number. "To infinity" means grows without bounds (under the current underlying system; now I do agree the system will at some point adjust.)
- Politics operates in reality, not ideals. There would never be such a legislation without a forcing function like this.
Maybe Tao cares about the long term health of the university, is against the policies that are hurting it (and the entire country if USA loses its top position as desirable academic hub) and wants to use his fame for something useful
The vast majority of people talking about how big university endowments are don't care what the rules are on it. It's not that people don't know how endowments work; they just find the rules to be bullshit to justify universities continuing the status quo.
