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One day someone has to make a dataset of how much talent we waste in the EU. Bsc gets paid by EU taxes, guy ends up teaching in US university or working for US company.

It has become the cycle of life.




I bet this is going to shift because the Russian brain drain is almost complete. Europe did not have to compete yet with the United states because Russia was a single source of the migration of several million highly educated people.

https://publications.atlanticcouncil.org/putin-exodus/


If highly productive people can't keep the fruit of their labor, they'll leave to a place where they can! We have less social programs in the US but the majority of productive people will probably prefer working here since they can take home a significantly higher salary even after taxes.


And after you add the expenses needed to make up for the social programs you don't have, you might even realize that what you're left with is not that significantly higher.


I don't think that's going to apply to the majority of high-income earners, because the difference is greater than the cost of not having free college or socialized healthcare. A college education is a one-time cost. You might pay $30,000 over time but when you're earning $130,000 or more, you can crush that really quickly and not be burdened by the higher taxation and reduced opportunity you'd be facing each year otherwise.

The same is true with healthcare in America. It's actually not that bad if you have a decent insurance plan and some cash. For high-income earners, which is the people we are talking about leaving from the UK, it's most likely going to be a net gain over time to have the higher salaries and lower taxes.

There's a reason the best engineers are going to want to leave the UK, Canada, India, China, etc, and come to the USA. It's worth it. I personally could work from anywhere including the UK, but why would I subject myself to such lower pay for little or no real gain?


Healthcare is "not that bad" if you have some cash, because then you can afford to go abroad, e.g. India for your care. Other than that, it is terrible.


...do you live in the US? I have lots of problems with our health system, even as someone with health insurance, but I very rarely find myself traveling to India for healthcare.


My brother-in-law worked at a walmart warehouse for $15 an hour. Had no car payment (owned a used junker). Paid $600 for rent (mobile home). His wife applied for medicaid and was accepted and had their first child at a county hospital for little/no charge. After two years, they also used some day care thing for no charge as well. His wife would take the kid there and then stay home and post garbage all day on facebook. By year three, they started putting their 3 year old on a bus for some "pre-k 3" program at the local public elementary. The qualifications for the "pre-k 3" program were $400 a month $0 if on medicaid. Wife used this even larger amount of free time to post garbage on facebook. Kid's always sick cause of public school, but with medicaid they paid $10 per doc visit (which is two+ times a month)

As for me, I gave up on insurance once it got to $800 a month (which was the same as my rent). Denied coverage from then on, claimed religious exemption, and built a house with the money I saved. Paid $4,500 at a local birth center for each of my kid's birth and neither have ever been to a hospital or doctor.

So complaining about "how bad things are" is actually "terrible" on your part.


Depends on where you come from - it may not be a pure $$ angle alone. (for most places of origin, $$ also works out).

Status of living is higher for many folks who move to US in terms of ability to actually use the outdoors (less pollution, less population, a civic sense of cleanliness, better traffic and so on), less corruption, better police force, better government, better healthcare (not cheaper), better food (regulations) and so many more angles. Obviously not all of em apply to all countries, but there is a good mix. Not to mention US dollar goes much further in many countries.

There is a reason why US actually rejects 100s of 1000s of H1B applications every year.


In aggregate you're 100% correct, but on an individual level if you're a senior technical employee at a large tech company, you're absolutely better off in the US.


Like what? If you are a high productivity engineer you will have excellent health care through your employer.


What if you're a high productivity engineer working on your own startup?


Then you should be in the USA and not the EU if you're hoping for VC funding.


Not just Europe, have a look at how many top Silicon Valley types went to IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) [1]. Why would you stay in your home country when you can hop on a plane and 10x your salary (not to mention work at the cutting edge of science and engineering, rather than a decade late)?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institutes_of_Technolog...


Perhaps once the EU pays more than 50% of the salary that is paid in the US to software devs/analysts/etc, we'll see this behavior change.


Ironically, the EU has only few top tier software development companies because of (my personal uninformed opinion) all the taxes that reach 50% of the revenue to support social policies that include access to the universities.


The state serves a collection of individuals. If a particular individual is underserved, then it is consistent with the purpose of the state to:

1. Celebrate brain drain, because your people are improving their circumstances

2. Quickly move to one-up the U.S. and attract talent back to the EU

Almost no one wants to leave their homeland unless the opportunities elsewhere are significantly better.


> Almost no one wants to leave their homeland unless the opportunities elsewhere are significantly better.

That highly depends on where you homeland actually is. I can think of many places on earth where people would like nothing better than to leave but simply can't (language barrier, degrees not good enough to relocate, etc ...)


Agreed. Interpret "opportunities" broadly. I don't just mean job opportunities, I mean all sorts of economic and social opportunities. If Bulgaria had top universities, great governance, a vibrant economy, and all the social changes that come along with that, I don't think young Bulgarians would be departing in droves.


> Bsc gets paid by EU taxes, guy ends up teaching in US university or working for US company.

Why would this be a concern? They should be free to go where they want to. Just because university education is publicly funded does not mean that they owe their career success to their national government.


While brain drain is a thing, why do you feel that this is a noteworthy example? The phenomenon clearly predates the EU and for this course in particular, you can get the same thing in universities all over Europe.


One problem I see here is considering it to be wasteful...


It is wasteful from the perspective of the taxpayers that funded that highly-specialized, highly-sought after education only to see it move away

(BTW the argument is the same even if that education was not strictly paid off by public money. The way societies and nations organize themselves, you're taking up a valuable resource just by occupying the "slot", even if you are paying for it the people around you are incurring in all sorts od externalities to support your existence and studies)

I'm honestly surprised that the position that Brain Drain is not a problem exists and would be curious to see your reasoning

Also - Brain Drain also negatively affects the destination country in the sense that it "eases" the societal pressure on providing top notch/decent education to the general population. Why bother with educating your people when you can let the best people from elsewhere immigrate? Revert that and see how fast FAANG backed education reforms hit

Note -I'm not all in for either side, and believe as in most things there's an ideal middle ground. Let some come. Send some away, too! There's a lot of value in the exchange.

But check the list od instructors in the post's page: a tremendously hot topic in one of the best educational institutions in the world - and how many instructors are stereotypically "immigrants"? I'm leaning towards 100%


Most expats do not move away altogether from their country of origin. Labor mobility ("brain drain"), even of skilled professionals, is not a negative; on the contrary, it has huge positive externalities for both the origin and the destination country, even if these don't always show up in obvious monetary terms.

People are the ultimate 'resource' for building wealth, and ensuring that people are free to move around and seek the highest and best opportunities for themselves is absolutely the best policy. (At least if a few safeguards are included to minimize, e.g. social disruption due to large-scale movement of people affecting the local culture and society in unexpected ways. 'Open borders' should never be taken literally, but it's an ideal to move towards gradually.)




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