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From the article: > Educating children is incredibly expensive. The regions are quite annoyed that they pay to educate their children but that Tokyo reaps all

From the article: > Educating children is incredibly expensive. The regions are quite annoyed that they pay to educate their children but that Tokyo reaps all the benefits. This state of affairs has continued for decades. We see the same problem in USA states. State taxpayer dollars pay for some amount of public college education for state universities. These are typically called "State Appropriations", and varies between 30-80% of the student's overall tuition costs. Back in the 1980's, taxpayers footed most college tuition using state appropriations, so college was "cheap" for students back then. Now (2023), (at least in my state, Michigan), state appropriations typically cover 20-40% of a college student's tuition. There is concern with this though, because of what is called "brain drain". Citizens spend all these taxpayer dollars educating youth at colleges, then the graduates from U of M, etc all move out of state to California, Boston, Seattle, etc for big tech jobs. Then the state of Michigan doesn't see any more tax dollars from those students. Which begs the question, why pay tax dollars for higher education if those who benefit from that education do not contribute back?

wirthjason 3y ago
Thank you for saying Michigan is your state. Context matters a lot. It’s annoying when people generically use “in my state” or “in my country”.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
I went to michigan and tons tons tons of people ended up at the auto companies. Sure many left the state, but there's no doubt that the state had many more educated high earners because of the university.
jadbox 3y ago
I think this is what makes the article so interesting of this hometown tax idea, as I would have liked to have participated if it was here. Fwiw, I moved away from UofM to California for career building last decade, but I moved back this year as I do love Michigan, the highly volatile weather and all.
guardiangod 3y ago
>We see the same problem in USA states. State taxpayer dollars pay for some amount of public college education for state universities. These are typically called "State Appropriations", and varies between 30-80% of the student's overall tuition costs. And the world yell the same thing to USA. Canada, Italy, and England etc. all subsides their world-class universities with public funding. Where do the students go after graduation? US.
bern4444 3y ago
Its up to the state then to ensure they create an environment that attracts these recently graduated students! Listen to what these post graduate students want - for those who are moving a city like NYC or Boston they are probably enjoying not having urban sprawl, fun downtown areas, available housing, easy and accessible public transportation, etc.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  > Listen to what these post graduate students want - for those who are moving a city like NYC or Boston I totally agree with everything you’re saying and listed but let’s not pretend the biggest item is anything but “higher salary” for most. We all know that some of these major metros have companies that pay 5-10x what you’d get in a small midwestern town. Anecdotally, I did an internship in Cleveland followed by an internship in Santa Clara (Silicon Valley). I got job offers from both and chose California. The Cleveland company was a major donor to me school, so I got hounded by the schools career development office about why I chose to go to Santa Clara instead. They asked what the company could do to be more attractive to me - they mentioned intern ice cream parties, and Friday hours worked, and mentor programs, etc. The intern pay was $18/hr vs $80/hr, and when I brought it up, that was not a good answer - they wanted something cheaper easier and more superficial to change. My point is that NYC and Boston have nothing to worry about, and nothing will change.
  - naniwaduni 3y ago
    Hey, now, cut all the hours off every day other than Friday and then a 78% pay cut starts looking okay.
  - leetcrew 3y ago
    > I totally agree with everything you’re saying and listed but let’s not pretend the biggest item is anything but “higher salary” for most. We all know that some of these major metros have companies that pay 5-10x what you’d get in a small midwestern town. there's a lot of places in between "random midwestern town" and NYC that handily beat both on wages to COL ratio. even just looking at other major east coast cities like DC, atlanta, or boston, NYC is far more expensive and typical engineer pay is only a little higher.
emodendroket 3y ago
> Then the state of Michigan doesn't see any more tax dollars from those students. Which begs the question, why pay tax dollars for higher education if those who benefit from that education do not contribute back? People who live in Michigan might hope that their children can access a good education.
thanosbaskous 3y ago
Alaska has had to deal with an extreme version of this issue for a long time. One mitigation that the state has come up with is to offer competitively priced student loans to Alaska residents who are bound for colleges across the US. The interest rate on the loans is further lowered if you live in Alaska after graduation, incentivizing educated Alaskans to come back. Those students are also likely to have maintained their Alaska residency to qualify for the Permanent Fund Dividend (an annual payment that comes from rolling returns on the state’s sovereign wealth fund).
retrac 3y ago
There is a similar phenomenon with Canada, and the USA. University is cheaper and more subsidized in Canada, and then a small but significant % of graduates - often some of the very best - move to the USA, and then never pay another tax dollar towards education, or anything else. It might be a bit annoying, but there's little that can actually be done about it, and all the usual arguments about the benefits of an educated populace still apply; the vast majority don't move away.
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  Pure spitballing. What if: in exchange for fully subsidized schooling at a state school, graduates participated in a profit-sharing agreement with the country and city that they went to school in? Similar to the Lambda model (what happened to them anyways?).
  - drw3 3y ago
    Sued by former students: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardconroy/2023/03/29/former-students-are-suing-for-profit-coding-bootcamp-bloomtech/?sh=f2ffaf555234 https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardconroy/2023/03/29/former-...
    - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
      Yikes! Well this seems like a place where colleges are socialized better: we all know that getting a college degree, especially certain degrees, are no indicator of employability.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      Sure, but Lambda got sued for misrepresenting material facts about the deal to their students. I don't think this lawsuit (or Lambda's actions) invalidates the idea GP presented.
      - drw3 3y ago
        I don’t disagree, I was just responding to the person who asked what had happened to Lambda :)
RhysU 3y ago
This is a perspective issue. The customer was the in-state parent. Rest assured, they were taxed just fine. The child, when it finishes college, should do whatever is best for the child. If the kids are leaving the state, the problem is the state isn't attractive to the next generation. Not that the kid somehow skipped out on the state. Heck, the state had an inertial advantage over every other state and still couldn't keep the kid there. Source: I grew up in Pennsylvania. Love the place. Left for greener pastures. Don't owe them anything out of my paychecks today. But my parents kicked into their coffers for decades and still do.
- mihaic 3y ago
  I'm trying to see both sides, but how is the parent the customer here? I think you're mixing an opinion on high taxation in general (which you might be right about), versus how big metropolises enjoy labor that was raised somewhere else.
  - rowanG077 3y ago
    Of course the parent is the customer. Generally the parent is the one who makes sure the child is wel prepared for the future. College is a step in that process.
    - mihaic 3y ago
      I agree that the parent is a beneficiary of the education, but my argument is with the fact that "customer" involves one beneficiary. By your logic for instance anyone that's childless shouldn't pay taxes for education, even though they benefit indirectly from an educated population. Isn't the company that's hiring the graduate just as much a beneficiary for instance?
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    One of the biggest functions of primary education beyond preparing the kid for their future is as a free(ish) place to stick your kid during working hours. Look at what happened during COVID when schools were shutdown it caused a lot of problems because suddenly someone had to take care of the kid during the day. The chaos that change caused alone is I think excellent evidence for that. It's also why schools happen so early even though it's clinically proven to be an inferior time to start school for the kid, they have to start that early so the parent(s) can get to their 9-5 job.
kstrauser 3y ago
On the other hand, if college were still affordable, students could stay where they wanted instead of being all but forced to move to cities with higher salaries. For every 1 software engineer who flees to Silicon Valley, I bet there are 20 accountants, teachers, and nurses who'd like to continue living in their home state if they could afford it.
WalterBright 3y ago
> all move out of state to California, Boston, Seattle, etc for big tech jobs Seattle is busy complaining about all those tech jobs, and how unfair it is that they make lots of money. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-splitting-of-seattle-and-the-eastside-too-is-accelerating/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-splitting-of-s...
- Izikiel43 3y ago
  Hate if you do, hate if you don't. If there were no tech jobs, people here would complain that they don't have them. If there are tech jobs, they complain that there are too many, when in reality they are complaining because they are missing out.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    I do suspect that there would be different people complaining in those two cases (with some overlap, sure). Either way, the complains are pretty irrational. I live in San Francisco, where all the property owners are thrilled that their home value has surged in the past couple decades. Take away all the tech jobs, and see what happens to those home values... Can't have your cake and eat it too.
    - Izikiel43 3y ago
      Yeah, Seattle is the same.
volkl48 3y ago
While not a perfect program, it seems to me that NY State's "Excelsior scholarship" (for those who's family has a household income of <$125k) is one possible answer to that. College tuition is free, you're required to live and work in NY State for the same number of years that you accepted the state funding for after graduation. If you don't do that, the scholarship/grant becomes a loan.
- scarby2 3y ago
  This probably works in NY as it's a good place to start a career after college. Try doing this in West Virginia, Alabama or North Dakota. If you took that program after graduating you'd probably find yourself working for low wages and being underemployed.
omscs99 3y ago
I don’t get why money is so concentrated in NYC and SV Why are people willing to pay more to get you to move to those areas? It just seems really weird, like there’s some man behind the curtain pulling strings to concentrate people in the above metro areas
- Izikiel43 3y ago
  Because there is money there, it's a virtuous cycle. NYC with wall street and tech, SV with VCs and tech. It's the place to be for those things, which makes it the place to be for those things, which brings more money in for those things, repeat.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Because that's where the businesses and business connections are. It's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem. NYC & SV are successful business hubs because they are successful business hubs. Sure, they both had to start somewhere, there's no guarantee of their continued dominance, and that's not to say other business hubs can't come into their own, but it's going to be an uphill battle for new locales wanting to attract talent. The pandemic & work-from-home made people realize that these hubs aren't really as crucial to business success as people thought they were, but there's still a lot of institutional inertia (not to mention shitty companies requiring employees to return to office for no real reason aside from managerial power trips).
- bsder 3y ago
  > I don’t get why money is so concentrated in NYC and SV For the same reason that Detroit was the technical hub 100 years ago. Smart people congregating leads to more smart people congregating.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
It is way worse in a state like Wyoming: https://wyomingtruth.org/brain-drain-majority-of-university-of-wyoming-students-leave-the-state-after-graduation-study-shows/ https://wyomingtruth.org/brain-drain-majority-of-university-... (66% leave after graduation). Utah, however, is pretty good about keeping its graduates in state (as well as grabbing some of Wyoming's).
- screye 3y ago
  The real question is whether Wyoming should be a state at all. With 1 million distributed over a vast rural area and no real city.... ofc young people are leaving. America has a 40x gap between its smallest and largest state. Leaving Wyoming is the same as leaving SF for San Jose in population terms.

wirthjason 3y ago

Thank you for saying Michigan is your state. Context matters a lot. It’s annoying when people generically use “in my state” or “in my country”.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

I went to michigan and tons tons tons of people ended up at the auto companies. Sure many left the state, but there's no doubt that the state had many more educated high earners because of the university.

jadbox 3y ago

I think this is what makes the article so interesting of this hometown tax idea, as I would have liked to have participated if it was here. Fwiw, I moved away from UofM to California for career building last decade, but I moved back this year as I do love Michigan, the highly volatile weather and all.

guardiangod 3y ago

>We see the same problem in USA states. State taxpayer dollars pay for some amount of public college education for state universities. These are typically called "State Appropriations", and varies between 30-80% of the student's overall tuition costs. And the world yell the same thing to USA. Canada, Italy, and England etc. all subsides their world-class universities with public funding. Where do the students go after graduation? US.

bern4444 3y ago

Its up to the state then to ensure they create an environment that attracts these recently graduated students! Listen to what these post graduate students want - for those who are moving a city like NYC or Boston they are probably enjoying not having urban sprawl, fun downtown areas, available housing, easy and accessible public transportation, etc.

vineyardmike 3y ago
> Listen to what these post graduate students want - for those who are moving a city like NYC or Boston I totally agree with everything you’re saying and listed but let’s not pretend the biggest item is anything but “higher salary” for most. We all know that some of these major metros have companies that pay 5-10x what you’d get in a small midwestern town. Anecdotally, I did an internship in Cleveland followed by an internship in Santa Clara (Silicon Valley). I got job offers from both and chose California. The Cleveland company was a major donor to me school, so I got hounded by the schools career development office about why I chose to go to Santa Clara instead. They asked what the company could do to be more attractive to me - they mentioned intern ice cream parties, and Friday hours worked, and mentor programs, etc. The intern pay was $18/hr vs $80/hr, and when I brought it up, that was not a good answer - they wanted something cheaper easier and more superficial to change. My point is that NYC and Boston have nothing to worry about, and nothing will change.
- naniwaduni 3y ago
  Hey, now, cut all the hours off every day other than Friday and then a 78% pay cut starts looking okay.
- leetcrew 3y ago
  > I totally agree with everything you’re saying and listed but let’s not pretend the biggest item is anything but “higher salary” for most. We all know that some of these major metros have companies that pay 5-10x what you’d get in a small midwestern town. there's a lot of places in between "random midwestern town" and NYC that handily beat both on wages to COL ratio. even just looking at other major east coast cities like DC, atlanta, or boston, NYC is far more expensive and typical engineer pay is only a little higher.

emodendroket 3y ago

> Then the state of Michigan doesn't see any more tax dollars from those students. Which begs the question, why pay tax dollars for higher education if those who benefit from that education do not contribute back? People who live in Michigan might hope that their children can access a good education.

thanosbaskous 3y ago

Alaska has had to deal with an extreme version of this issue for a long time. One mitigation that the state has come up with is to offer competitively priced student loans to Alaska residents who are bound for colleges across the US. The interest rate on the loans is further lowered if you live in Alaska after graduation, incentivizing educated Alaskans to come back. Those students are also likely to have maintained their Alaska residency to qualify for the Permanent Fund Dividend (an annual payment that comes from rolling returns on the state’s sovereign wealth fund).

retrac 3y ago

There is a similar phenomenon with Canada, and the USA. University is cheaper and more subsidized in Canada, and then a small but significant % of graduates - often some of the very best - move to the USA, and then never pay another tax dollar towards education, or anything else. It might be a bit annoying, but there's little that can actually be done about it, and all the usual arguments about the benefits of an educated populace still apply; the vast majority don't move away.

femiagbabiaka 3y ago
Pure spitballing. What if: in exchange for fully subsidized schooling at a state school, graduates participated in a profit-sharing agreement with the country and city that they went to school in? Similar to the Lambda model (what happened to them anyways?).
- drw3 3y ago
  Sued by former students: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardconroy/2023/03/29/former-students-are-suing-for-profit-coding-bootcamp-bloomtech/?sh=f2ffaf555234 https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardconroy/2023/03/29/former-...
  - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
    Yikes! Well this seems like a place where colleges are socialized better: we all know that getting a college degree, especially certain degrees, are no indicator of employability.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    Sure, but Lambda got sued for misrepresenting material facts about the deal to their students. I don't think this lawsuit (or Lambda's actions) invalidates the idea GP presented.
    - drw3 3y ago
      I don’t disagree, I was just responding to the person who asked what had happened to Lambda :)

RhysU 3y ago

This is a perspective issue. The customer was the in-state parent. Rest assured, they were taxed just fine. The child, when it finishes college, should do whatever is best for the child. If the kids are leaving the state, the problem is the state isn't attractive to the next generation. Not that the kid somehow skipped out on the state. Heck, the state had an inertial advantage over every other state and still couldn't keep the kid there. Source: I grew up in Pennsylvania. Love the place. Left for greener pastures. Don't owe them anything out of my paychecks today. But my parents kicked into their coffers for decades and still do.

mihaic 3y ago
I'm trying to see both sides, but how is the parent the customer here? I think you're mixing an opinion on high taxation in general (which you might be right about), versus how big metropolises enjoy labor that was raised somewhere else.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  Of course the parent is the customer. Generally the parent is the one who makes sure the child is wel prepared for the future. College is a step in that process.
  - mihaic 3y ago
    I agree that the parent is a beneficiary of the education, but my argument is with the fact that "customer" involves one beneficiary. By your logic for instance anyone that's childless shouldn't pay taxes for education, even though they benefit indirectly from an educated population. Isn't the company that's hiring the graduate just as much a beneficiary for instance?
- rtkwe 3y ago
  One of the biggest functions of primary education beyond preparing the kid for their future is as a free(ish) place to stick your kid during working hours. Look at what happened during COVID when schools were shutdown it caused a lot of problems because suddenly someone had to take care of the kid during the day. The chaos that change caused alone is I think excellent evidence for that. It's also why schools happen so early even though it's clinically proven to be an inferior time to start school for the kid, they have to start that early so the parent(s) can get to their 9-5 job.

kstrauser 3y ago

On the other hand, if college were still affordable, students could stay where they wanted instead of being all but forced to move to cities with higher salaries. For every 1 software engineer who flees to Silicon Valley, I bet there are 20 accountants, teachers, and nurses who'd like to continue living in their home state if they could afford it.

WalterBright 3y ago

> all move out of state to California, Boston, Seattle, etc for big tech jobs Seattle is busy complaining about all those tech jobs, and how unfair it is that they make lots of money. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-splitting-of-seattle-and-the-eastside-too-is-accelerating/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-splitting-of-s...

Izikiel43 3y ago
Hate if you do, hate if you don't. If there were no tech jobs, people here would complain that they don't have them. If there are tech jobs, they complain that there are too many, when in reality they are complaining because they are missing out.
- kelnos 3y ago
  I do suspect that there would be different people complaining in those two cases (with some overlap, sure). Either way, the complains are pretty irrational. I live in San Francisco, where all the property owners are thrilled that their home value has surged in the past couple decades. Take away all the tech jobs, and see what happens to those home values... Can't have your cake and eat it too.
  - Izikiel43 3y ago
    Yeah, Seattle is the same.

volkl48 3y ago

While not a perfect program, it seems to me that NY State's "Excelsior scholarship" (for those who's family has a household income of <$125k) is one possible answer to that. College tuition is free, you're required to live and work in NY State for the same number of years that you accepted the state funding for after graduation. If you don't do that, the scholarship/grant becomes a loan.

scarby2 3y ago
This probably works in NY as it's a good place to start a career after college. Try doing this in West Virginia, Alabama or North Dakota. If you took that program after graduating you'd probably find yourself working for low wages and being underemployed.

omscs99 3y ago

I don’t get why money is so concentrated in NYC and SV Why are people willing to pay more to get you to move to those areas? It just seems really weird, like there’s some man behind the curtain pulling strings to concentrate people in the above metro areas

Izikiel43 3y ago
Because there is money there, it's a virtuous cycle. NYC with wall street and tech, SV with VCs and tech. It's the place to be for those things, which makes it the place to be for those things, which brings more money in for those things, repeat.
kelnos 3y ago
Because that's where the businesses and business connections are. It's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem. NYC & SV are successful business hubs because they are successful business hubs. Sure, they both had to start somewhere, there's no guarantee of their continued dominance, and that's not to say other business hubs can't come into their own, but it's going to be an uphill battle for new locales wanting to attract talent. The pandemic & work-from-home made people realize that these hubs aren't really as crucial to business success as people thought they were, but there's still a lot of institutional inertia (not to mention shitty companies requiring employees to return to office for no real reason aside from managerial power trips).
bsder 3y ago
> I don’t get why money is so concentrated in NYC and SV For the same reason that Detroit was the technical hub 100 years ago. Smart people congregating leads to more smart people congregating.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

It is way worse in a state like Wyoming: https://wyomingtruth.org/brain-drain-majority-of-university-of-wyoming-students-leave-the-state-after-graduation-study-shows/ https://wyomingtruth.org/brain-drain-majority-of-university-... (66% leave after graduation). Utah, however, is pretty good about keeping its graduates in state (as well as grabbing some of Wyoming's).

screye 3y ago
The real question is whether Wyoming should be a state at all. With 1 million distributed over a vast rural area and no real city.... ofc young people are leaving. America has a 40x gap between its smallest and largest state. Leaving Wyoming is the same as leaving SF for San Jose in population terms.