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Brain Drain Within the EU?

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Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#201

Post by binbag »

user5994461 wrote: post #182
binbag wrote: post #135

This is interesting. I'm UK native and my feeling was that the UK is struggling to develop more engys/scienstists. But other countries are evidently struggling even more. I also thought that Germany's contribution would be way more than the UK's, but that's not the case.

To be honest, there aren't that many jobs to fill and there wouldn't be much point in having more graduates. Also, UK universities are expensive and not particularly good. UK Graduates have to compete against the cream of the crop of European graduates who had free education and are desperate to flee their country.

I don't understand your point. The UK contains the largest proportion of STEM workers in Europe, equalled only by Germany, and the UK contains some of the best unis in the world.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#202

Post by user5994461 »

binbag wrote: post #201
user5994461 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, there aren't that many jobs to fill and there wouldn't be much point in having more graduates. Also, UK universities are expensive and not particularly good. UK Graduates have to compete against the cream of the crop of European graduates who had free education and are desperate to flee their country.

I don't understand your point. The UK contains the largest proportion of STEM workers in Europe, equalled only by Germany, and the UK contains some of the best unis in the world.

The first point is self explanatory. There is no shortage of STEM graduates and a limited amount of jobs. Why would would you want to train many more?

Every big developed country has some of the best universities in the world. The UK is not any better than what can be found in Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland or Romania.

I guess what I am trying to get at is that there is no struggling as you said. It's the opposite in fact, there are way too many engineers/scientists trained across Europe. They can't find jobs where they come from and they are forced to move to London or Germany.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#203

Post by rdm_blackhole »

Its no surprise, in France 50% of the population makes less than 1850 euros net per month. Try to live on that when your rent is close to 800 euros for a 1 bedroom apartment(not even in Paris).

That's why I left! Plus the social services and public transport is utter crap with strikes, breakdown, constant unreliability. Government employees don't care about your issues.

No wonder that people are living.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#204

Post by gurumeditations »

ciumonk wrote: post #160
petre wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark has crazy high taxes. I know several cases of people moving to Switzerland and other EU countries to escape the tax burden.

And a crazy good social safety net. If you're having any sort of difficulty(ranging from depression to bankruptcy), you'll get adequate state support(income, subsidised housing and healthcare) for a long time. I wonder why more people don't start businesses there, given that it's seldom fatal to risk and fail..

I’d guess because the people who really have the money to start a business aren’t poor enough to worry about having to live on the street if it fails. Also, perhaps the strength of the safety net makes people feel less of a need to be entrepreneurial.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#205

Post by fx32s »

kabes wrote: post #129
NicoJuicy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really about taxes? Most taxes are in Belgium where I live and I don't think there's a brain drain

Quite the opposite, the current firm I work at in Belgium (Barco) is able to attract quite a lot of engineers from other EU countries, who obviously don't come to Belgium for taxation benefits. I think higher salary is the single most important factor.

High salary in Belgium? I'm from Belgium and pretty much every neighboring country beats Belgium wrt salary (tech sector)

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#206

Post by repolfx »

tigershark wrote: post #192
repolfx wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost thousands of pounds already? How did you manage that? The UK economy has grown strongly since the vote. If you look at the GDP data you'll see there's hardly any difference in the last few years: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth Note that Q1 GDP growth is usually revised upwards some time after publication, so I'd expect Q1 2018 to come into alignment with the other years after enough t…

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annua... Don't you notice anything between before June 2016 and after? Before was growing at 2.2%, now it is growing at just 1.2%. To me 1.2% seems pretty close to half of 2.2%. I lost thousand of pounds because I had to spend money abroad and thanks to the collapsing value of the pound I had to spend much more. Where you live has a huge importance because you cl…

Like I said, you have to be careful with recent GDP figures because Q1 is always revised upwards - there's some repetitive statistical flaw in the way the ONS calculates these things, it's always the same problem.

It's possible the figure for 2018 will be slightly lower in the end, we'll have to wait and see. But GDP growth went from 3% to 2% between 2015-2016 and nothing much was happening then, so again, you're taking perfectly normal and quite small fluctuations in economic indicators and linking them all to Brexit, which is logically unsupportable.

As I said before, the strengthening of the Euro is related to economic changes in the eurozone and not anything to do with Brexit. That can be easily seen by just comparing GBP vs other currency pairs. Your trip cost more because Europe became less poor, not because the UK did.

As for the implication I somehow don't know what the UK is like, knock off it mate. I visit the UK every month or two because I work for a company based there, and actually am British myself. I am very familiar with how it's doing, and it's doing fine. Stop assigning arbitrary fluctuations in a single exchange rate to your personal political biases.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#207

Post by growlist »

ciguy wrote: post #18

I'm living in Italy at the moment, and I can watch the brain drain happening in real time. Every single university student I know here is looking to go to the UK or Germany when they graduate, almost without exception. I can't blame them at all, taxes are excessive and bureaucracy is excruciating here. Finding even a temporary job usually requires family connections, so the dumbest people with connections end up as m…

It's a real shame, as I would have loved to have lived/worked in Italy rather than anywhere else in Europe. I had a sniff of a job in Ispra 15 years ago but sadly it didn't come off.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#208

Post by growlist »

holografix wrote: post #152
NicoJuicy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really about taxes? Most taxes are in Belgium where I live and I don't think there's a brain drain

I don’t mean to offend you but as a foreigner living in Brussels the taxes and overall cost of living, for the services you receive, are shockingly terrible. The inefficieny of the Belgium bureaucracy is like nothing I have ever seen before and if Italy is any worse I can’t blame a single soul for abandoning ship. I visited Milan a month ago and was very happily surprised at how clean and orderly the city seemed. A w…

Counterpoint, I received a tax rebate in the post a couple of years after leaving Belgium to return to the UK. Somehow I doubt the UK's tax office would be so diligent in seeking out former taxpayers abroad to return money to them!

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#209

Post by borroka »

icebraining wrote: post #197
borroka wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Switzerland is much more expensive than living in Italy (housing especially), so salaries are more or less adjusted accordingly to the cost of living. Then, there are also some top Universities in Switzerland. When I was doing my postdoc ~ 7-10 years ago, I was making 1500 euros after taxes.

Living in Switzerland is much more expensive than living in Italy (housing especially), so salaries are more or less adjusted accordingly to the cost of living. A relative adjustment might still mean a large absolute difference, though; I don't know about Italy and Switzerland, but even paying double for a house in Luxembourg compared to an equivalent in Portugal, and not earning double, I still had more money at the…

It is correct. But saying A pays more than B and not factoring in the cost of living is not a useful exercise.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#210

Post by ben_w »

jbros wrote: post #195
tigershark wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annua... Don't you notice anything between before June 2016 and after? Before was growing at 2.2%, now it is growing at just 1.2%. To me 1.2% seems pretty close to half of 2.2%. I lost thousand of pounds because I had to spend money abroad and thanks to the collapsing value of the pound I had to spend much more. Where you live has a huge importance because you cl…

GDP is a flawed metric.

Yes, but until they’ve got a better one, we’re going to keep using it.
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