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It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the world were willing to give up everything
by thinkingtoilet 2y ago
It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the world were willing to give up everything to come here. That is no longer the case. Today's Einstein probably isn't going to immigrate here.
- drivebyhooting 2y agoFor nearly a century Europe incinerated itself twice over.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> That is no longer the case. For all I shit relentlessly on this country and its culture, it's still an extremely attractive place to live if you're well-situated to make money. (Most people are not—hence my contempt for how the society functions. This presumably DOES apply to an "Einstein", if indeed this Einstein wants money.) China still has a way to go in catering to and granting citizenship (or some amenable equivalent) to foreigners.
- cyberax 2y agoGoing through the _legal_ immigration in the US is hell. Even if you're immigrating through a "talent" visa. Never mind regular work visa/GC.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoWell, what's the alternative? Live in some poor country with a happy and contented existence? Fuck no, I want money: happiness is for suckers
- johnnyanmac 2y agoYou have the metaphor backwards. Where do you go if you're a talented American and your own country continually does not want to pay for your talent? It's the brain drain out of the US to worry about, not the influx of immigration.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> Where do you go if you're a talented American and your own country continually does not want to pay for your talent? China is the only country that pays even remotely competitively. Yes, even including all the nice benefits of living in a european welfare state, yes including the other anglo colonies.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoMakes sense, it's just basic economy to pay for spent and get it. Something the US is continually giving up. Still, their culture basically does make it so certain types of people simply can't exist there. And I hear there's a healthy dose of racism as well. Nothing unique to China, sadly.
- int_19h 2y agoThe alternative is to go to another first-world country that makes it easier. E.g. Canada or Australia.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago>if you're well-situated to make money so basically, like everything else, you make a lot of money but it isn't a great place to live unless you make ALL the money.
- Gomer1800 2y agoYou make a good point about China. It’s still an ethnostate, and I don’t see how it can reconcile such a strong ethnic nationalist identity with its own demographic crisis and competition for labor from abroad.
- adamc 2y agoEinstein didn't emigrate to get rich, he emigrated because the Nazi's took over Germany. Germany had the best universities in the world before they took the path of self-destruction. So that was a second, separate event that helped America. America stills gets a lot of immigrants.
- junon 2y agoPretty sure the use of "Einstein" here is symbolic, not literal.
- spacemadness 2y agoSo use a different example? Einstein isn’t interchangeable, lol.
- linkjuice4all 2y agoWell, hopefully nothing like that happens in the US - that is to say an ideologue that ruins a country by ostracizing and then removing skilled immigrants or deters them from coming in the first place. Perhaps we can examine some recent large scale survey data to determine if the US populace gives a shit.
- brickfaced 2y agoThe US didn't win World War 2, break the sound barrier, or put a man on the Moon only or primarily due to immigrant workers. We scoured the country's public school system for the sharpest young minds, sent them to institutions of higher learning with rigorous curricula, and found them positions in industry, government, or the military which made good use of their talent. Fetishizing the "nation of immigrants" narrative at the expensive of the native-born Americans who actually built most of this country's prosperity is, at best, ahistorical.
- wbl 2y agoOur German scientists were better than their German scientists. We had no real science PhD programs until the 1920's. We had no scouting for young minds until the 1950's.
- selimthegrim 2y agoOur Jews from Odessa were better than theirs too.
- krapp 2y agoUnless your ancestors crossed the Bering Strait ten thousand years ago, calling yourself "native born" doesn't mean a thing.
- WillPostForFood 2y agoIf you only came across ten thousand years ago, you are just a colonist that killed and displaced the people who came across sixteen thousand years ago. But that said, native born has a definition, and it is where you were born, not where your parents, grandparents or grand^14 parents was born.
- johnnyanmac 2y agomy grand^10 parent's didn't exactly "immigrate" her per se. They were "invited". I guess they were "persuaded" to help fight the occasional war though.
- numpad0 2y agoToday's Einstein ARE immigrating to US for such positions as finance, adtech and management, ones that explicitly produce no physical artifact.
- anothername12 2y agoUnfortunately, I spent more than a trivial amount of time wondering what an Einstein of Adtech looks like.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoBut not for the hardware that powers the white collar. China is taking those.
- numpad0 2y agoExactly. Something is penalizing or inhibiting manufacturing in developed countries. That something is just regular progression on the ladder of classical infinitely extending three-sector model[1] and gradual obsolescence of its lower rungs, but that is problematic, and without healthy preceding sectors for each, it's just a measuring contest being held in a skydiving. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sector
- niceice 2y agoThat is still the case and no where else is even close. https://www.statista.com/chart/30815/top-destination-countries-for-international-migrants/ https://www.statista.com/chart/30815/top-destination-countri... https://news.gallup.com/poll/468218/nearly-900-million-worldwide-wanted-migrate-2021.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/468218/nearly-900-million-world...
- lostlogin 2y agoDoes a want to immigrate necessarily mean that the US is the most favoured destination for the world’s intellectuals? It might, but how do you measure that?
- LeanderK 2y agoI just want to point out that germany and US have a similar number when adjusted to it's respected population size (I think it's even a little bit higher). I am kinda surprised to see it so far on the top