>The US spends a mind boggling amount of money on education and still gets out-competed by struggling poor countries. I don't think that makes sense, or rather

>The US spends a mind boggling amount of money on education and still gets out-competed by struggling poor countries. I don't think that makes sense, or rather it's a massive selection bias. The foreigners who manage to get a H-1B visa are usually highly qualified, but obviously that doesn't mean that all foreigners are highly qualified, those who aren't just don't get the visa. That's actually often a problem for these countries as the highly educated leave while the low qualified workforce remains at home. I'm sure the US produces highly qualified engineers, but you also have to care for your local, less qualified populace that you can't just export abroad and forget they exist. As for the fact that no homegrown engineer accepts to work in your "little backwater locale" that actually means that local engineers actually outcompete foreigners and not the other way around since it's those latter ones who have to settle for "the middle of nowhere".