Why do you think money is the ultimate motivator? It's proven that after some salary amount, you no longer get (much, if at all) happier. And if US politics is affecting you in a bad way, a salary hit will be totally fine.
They need to at least pay enough for a reasonable standard of living. Most people would rather give up on their science dreams than have roommates and no family or personal space into middle age.
I guess the question is how close European scientist wages are to "some salary amount", where you no longer have money troubles. I would say that in Europe that's something like 80k euros per year.
How much does, say, a starting research assistant get in France? 28,600. To add insult to injury, you get excluded from both of the major social benefits in France: you don't build up pension, you don't get medical coverage (or "you stay on your parents insurance" if you prefer. I'm not sure, but that isn't free for your parents). You are still classified as a student, until you get a professorship (maybe 3% eventually get a professorship). Also, you're excluded from other social services: if you try to claim unemployment or "existence minimum" support, the state will demand you quit research. A lot of "independent" (read: Catholic) universities support researchers from their own money, with free housing or the like, because they have to. Frankly, the Catholic church is STILL a big reason there is serious scientific research in Europe, frankly bigger than state support.
To put it bluntly, university wages in Europe need to more than triple (MORE than a 300% raise) before we start talking about "a salary hit" compared to the US. Research in Europe is a job you take to bridge the gap between finishing university and finding a job then abandon when you get a job (like Yann Lecun did. And no he didn't abandon his PhD for his current job, but for a beginner job at Bell Labs). Staying in research when you find an industry job is financial lunacy. Only the job of professor is somewhat decently paid, but perhaps you should visit Silicon Valley: there's plenty of people who quit a postdoc (midway through) to join US industry (for example, Yann Lecun), or even a professorship, like Jürgen Schmidhuber (he's back to professor, he has a reputation for being very hard to work with)
What people are saying here is that the investment the EU is making is barely 1% of what is required to fix the situation of scientists in the EU. I think, with this investment (with 10x this investment too btw) the EU brain drain TOWARDS the US will continue, Trump or no Trump. It won't even slow.
This is a joke, and these politicians should be ridiculed for making this absurd "gesture".
And yes, I'm frustrated about this. A career in research, like so many have in the US, is absolutely impossible unless you're born rich in Europe.
