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Brain Drain Across the United States

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Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#161

Post by burfog »

shmageggy wrote: post #74
defen wrote: post #51

Now, consider the "meta-brain-drain" of 1) increased assortative mating (people are increasingly more likely to marry someone of similar educational and professional achievement) and 2) college-educated women delaying childbirth and having fewer children than non-college-educated women. The net result is that more educated people tend to have fewer children than the less educated. If we assume educational attainment…

> It seems like we as a society need to figure out a way to make "have children at a reasonable age" not be a low-status move for highly educated / driven / intelligent women. Isn't the obvious answer better maternity leave laws? Ambitious women in the US don't have kids because it fucks their career. The US is literally last among OECD countries, offering zero guaranteed maternity pay [1]. [1] https://money.cnn.com/…

In this case, "better" might mean none at all. EU countries with lots of maternity leave are really lacking in children.

Without maternity leave, of course there is a disincentive to have any children. Once you do have a child though, you might as well have a bunch of children. You've already blown the career. This probably explains the odd result of countries with more maternity leave having fewer kids.

Another factor may be that the cost of maternity leave is passed on to everybody. Depending on legal details this may be via higher taxes, lower pay, and higher prices. It obviously isn't free. People often react to higher costs by having fewer kids. The policy may thus have the opposite of the intended effect.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#162

Post by scarejunba »

yasp wrote: post #6

I'm sure I will be downvoted for even mentioning his name, but Charles Murray has been writing about this for decades.

I googled this and it was a complete waste of time. Charles Murray essentially argues that heritability plus assortative mating makes it so that the gap between the smart and the not so will grow larger. The smart will come from the upper middle class who are already going to college because they're going to marry other upper middle class people who go to college and make kids who will be upper middle class and go to college.

He also strongly argues that your ability to succeed is a measure of your innate intelligence. (perhaps this is the part that user/yasp thought would be considered abhorrent?) and that combines with the earlier parts to say that there will be increased stratification and it will be on intelligence as well as on money.

This whole thing is a waste of time because I gained nothing novel from having chased this vague-ass comment. Ugh.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10...

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#163

Post by jaredklewis »

burlesona wrote: post #67
taurath wrote: post #11

Brain drain within the US is just as frequently about cultural rather than economic issues. The culture wars the republicans have been running on since the 80s turns off thoughtful people - anti-intellectualism is killing these states. That said, it’s incredibly underserved and there’s tons of very capable and friendly people. Edit: maybe I didn’t get the intended point across - I’d ask though, how many people do you…

I'm not sure the map backs up what you're saying. If you look at the 2017 Net Brain Drain it shows the following top gainers: - Texas - Virginia - Illinois - Maryland - Colorado - California - New Jersey - New York - Massachussets Georgia and North Carolina also showed strong gains (along with many other states). That may be blue-leaning but it's not a landslide. It's more like people are concentrating in the biggest…

How is it not a landslide? Of the 9 top gainers you listed, only one leans republican (Texas) [1]. All others lean democratic.

Of course as pointed out by a sibling, it’s kind of an irrelevant point anyway. The brain migration is away from rural areas (which are red, regardless of state), to big cities (which are blue, regardless of state). That only reenforces the parent’s hypothesis that intellectuals resent the anti-intellectual bent republicans have taken in recent times.

1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/247025/democratic-states-exceed...

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#164

Post by toofy »

skookumchuck wrote: post #124
phamilton wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big part of this is that even if you have guaranteed maternity pay, it still hurts your career. In a highly competitive environment, I don't see how not working for X amount of time doesn't lead to being X amount of time behind in career growth. The answer is to have less competitive environments. In Sweden, jantelagen (a cultural sentiment that discourages overt personal ambition) is a huge part of what enables…

As I recall, Sweden has had problems in the past where the ambitious people leave the country.

And yet they’re not tumbling into nothingness, in fact, many reasonable people place Sweden as an amazing place in many metrics, stable in the top 10% for most lists I’ve seen—everything from happiness levels to GDP(PPP).

Makes me question whether or not our (USians) shouldn’t push for a cultural change where we don’t worship so heavily at the alter of the hyperambitious.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#165

Post by taurath »

skookumchuck wrote: post #128
taurath wrote: post #11

Brain drain within the US is just as frequently about cultural rather than economic issues. The culture wars the republicans have been running on since the 80s turns off thoughtful people - anti-intellectualism is killing these states. That said, it’s incredibly underserved and there’s tons of very capable and friendly people. Edit: maybe I didn’t get the intended point across - I’d ask though, how many people do you…

> The culture wars the republicans have been running on since the 80s turns off thoughtful people - anti-intellectualism There was plenty of anti-intellectualism in the US in the 70s. The movie "Revenge of the Nerds" wasn't made in a cultural vacuum. Neither was "Animal House". Sports heros have always been worshiped, not so with intellectuals (other than Einstein). Much of this changed with Bill Gates. He was deride…

“Nerds” were derided as being relatively single-minded and unsocial, where to be successful in the business world at the time (and still now) meant communication and being able to easily form relationships. The nerds formed a new ladder from which to be successful and thereby respected - they’re powerful enough to take down the not-nerds.

You’re not wrong about anti-intellectualism always being a thing though, point taken!

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#166

Post by taurath »

Pokepokalypse wrote: post #118
opportune wrote: post #47

I’m from Kentucky, live on the west coast, and I cannot at all sympathize with those from there and similar states if they complain about brain drain. If you boast stupid, backwards policies and only give economic opportunities to the well connected, don’t be surprised when the intelligent but not well connected people leave the state. Maybe I’ll retire to my backwards hometown but I make more than double on the west…

Having moved from a rust-belt blue state; who had liberal policies (but. . . just failed to nurture their tech industry like other states did), I moved to California; for a richer employment opportunity. In terms of skills I could learn on the job, there's no way I could have gone nearly as far in my career if I limited myself to the set of employers that were available to me in my hometown. Now, I've moved to a red…

It’s the great American business bureaucracy - the middlemen companies that don’t drive anything forward, they just provide the minimum service to get their piece of the money funnel.

This exists in the Valley too. IBM, Oracle, Cisco, many businesses once they reach a certain maturity point just turn into “steady” parts of the market.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#167

Post by RandomInteger4 »

defen wrote: post #51

Now, consider the "meta-brain-drain" of 1) increased assortative mating (people are increasingly more likely to marry someone of similar educational and professional achievement) and 2) college-educated women delaying childbirth and having fewer children than non-college-educated women. The net result is that more educated people tend to have fewer children than the less educated. If we assume educational attainment…

A college education != higher IQ.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#168

Post by RandomInteger4 »

blub wrote: post #135
trabant00 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe education _is_ the problem. Maybe we're teaching children that things like career and information hoarding are more important than family and living life in general. And maybe hyper specialized brains (almost computers) should stay in low numbers relative to the general population. Maybe we're just walking hard drives, full of "facts". Maybe we're not as smart as we think.

"We" are not teaching. Everyone can see for themselves that raising kids is a thankless, difficult job which can hardly be reconciled with a successful career.

You need to connect more with other humans.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#169

Post by Broken_Hippo »

shmageggy wrote: post #74
defen wrote: post #51

Now, consider the "meta-brain-drain" of 1) increased assortative mating (people are increasingly more likely to marry someone of similar educational and professional achievement) and 2) college-educated women delaying childbirth and having fewer children than non-college-educated women. The net result is that more educated people tend to have fewer children than the less educated. If we assume educational attainment…

> It seems like we as a society need to figure out a way to make "have children at a reasonable age" not be a low-status move for highly educated / driven / intelligent women. Isn't the obvious answer better maternity leave laws? Ambitious women in the US don't have kids because it fucks their career. The US is literally last among OECD countries, offering zero guaranteed maternity pay [1]. [1] https://money.cnn.com/…

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Paternity leave is really important - some of which should be "must take" as much as a woman "must take" time and the rest can be taken by either parent or both parents can work less than full time. IIRC, paternity leave means women are discriminated against less for taking maternity leave.

But it is more than that. Making sure parents can take time off work when their child is sick or they have a meeting with the teacher and things like that are very important. Health care and so on? Important.

I'm guessing that where the paid leave comes from is really important as well: It seems that most of this should simply be taxpayer funded so it doesn't actually break a small business. The US medical leave laws exclude small businesses, so these folks can just fire you and besides, there is nothing saying you get paid time off at all.

There are probably other things that contribute as well.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#170

Post by sonnyblarney »

briandear wrote: post #102
sonnyblarney wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Level of education is a decent proxy for intelligence, in anything resembling an academic context. More education is usually better. It's why companies prefer hiring people with more education. That said, I think many roles should not require a college degree for application. That one single thing might make a big difference - because as you hint there are tons of otherwise great people who don't specifically have th…

Is the IQ of a person with a masters degree in sociology higher than the IQ of a non-degreee naval nuclear power technician? Yet the non-degrees nuke tech would be considered “less educated” by the measures being used in this discussion. A journeyman electrician often doesn’t have a degree, but they do more intellectually challenging work/calculations than some Master of Social Work person working at a local non-prof…

Anecdotes don't defeat the general fact: education is a good proxy for intelligence, conscientiousness, IQ. This is not contentious.

That doesn't mean there are not quite intelligent people who don't have a college degree, or that some kinds of specialized people are true artisans.

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