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Brain Drain Within the EU?

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Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#131

Post by KSteffensen »

petre wrote: post #108
KSteffensen wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to Denmark. It's been rated in the top 5 world wide on the 'ease of doing business' since 2012 and ahead of the USA since 2015. [1] Pretty much all bureaucracy happens online and my experience as an individual, is that it's minimal. I've never tried running a business , so I can't say anything on the bureaucracy there. We don't have that nice Southern France climate, though. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

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

Tax rate is somewhere between 40% and 60% depending on your income and spending patterns, but consider that we also have free education up to and including PH.D level and free healthcare.

Of course, everyone has their own take on whether that's good or bad.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pSFfTG42Jl8

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#132

Post by sverige »

jayalpha wrote: post #113
egeozcan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to what most people believe, I see that native English speakers can learn German rather easily (with a pretty distinct accent, which I really like :)). Your point stands though, as they usually don't know this before they actually start learning, so they must have other reasons.

"Contrary to what most people believe, I see that native English speakers can learn German rather easily" I doubt that. While English is part of the West Germanic languages, there are huge grammatical differences. I assume it would be much easier for a Polish or Russian Person to learn German than for an English. The sentence "Man bites Dog" and "Dog bites Man" has a different meaning in English, due to to position o…

As a native English speaker who studied German, Russian, and Polish, German was much easier to learn than the Slavic languages. The case system is smaller than Russian or Polish, and there are far more cognates which makes learning vocabulary much easier. Also, articles (e.g., "a" and "the") are notoriously difficult for non-native speakers of English, but German is similar enough.

Learning cases is a little hard, and the silly capitalization rules are a hindrance, but probably the most difficult thing in German for most English speakers is waiting for the damn verb to make its appearance. It's harder to guess what it will be than it is for native German speakers.

I would guess that learning German would be easier than English for a native speaker of a Slavic language, though, precisely because syntax plays such a critical role in English, which has only the barest vestiges of a case system remaining. My Russian friends in particular make some amusing errors with word order sometimes, but I think it's charming.

Edit: and for the example given, "Man bites dog" and "Dog bites man," what is required is a verb change, perhaps a couple of articles, and correct capitalization (unless it's a news headline, in which case it's fine). So, "Dog bites Man" can be written as "The man was bitten by a dog" with the same meaning. English verbs are also hard for non-native speakers, though.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#133

Post by chokma »

mkio wrote: post #127
woodpanel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(fictional, simplified) Example for a Software Engineer based in Germany [1]: Gross income: 100.000 EUR / year [2] ------------------------- TAXES - Income tax (28.600 EUR) - "solidarity premium" (2.300 EUR) - church tax (1.600 € - cumpolsory until you leave the curch) SOCIAL SECURITY (compulsory) - unemployed insurance (1.200 EUR) - pension insurance (7.300 EUR) - health insurance (4.500 EUR) - long term care (800 E…

100k is completely unrealistic for a German software engineer, especially after only a couple of years.

70-80K € seems attainable just judging by the recruiters' numbers, but most offers of that kind come with strings attached - like moving to one of the most expensive cities (thus being equal to a 50K job in a smaller city) or being a traveling consultant.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#134

Post by expertentipp »

Yes absolutely, e.g. Italy and Germany have exactly the same demographic situation (post-WWII boom, their children, and the third wave not happening), their social and pension systems face the same challenges. Now compare number of capable, production age, employed Italians living long-term in Germany and vice versa. The same problems will mature in Poland within 5-10 years.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#135

Post by binbag »

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.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#136

Post by x0rg »

louwrentius wrote: post #122
ciguy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax rates on middle income earners (15k to 30k euros annually) are higher in Italy, at least based on my limited research. If you have data to back up your claim that they are higher in Germany I'd love to see it. Either way that's not actually the core of the issue. In Germany, you get decent public transportation, great education and healthcare for your tax money. In Italy these things range from tolerable but inef…

Very interesting, it confirms what I suspected. A negative spiral caused by a fundamentally broken culture that Italy is unable to break away from. It's all about stuffing your pockets and those of your family. Because nobody can be trusted. You don't build for the future. You don't care about that now. It seems that there is a fundamental lack of trust amongst Italians. And if there's no trust, you can't build on ea…

I can tell you my story: I tried for years to stay in Italy and work there (it's my home country). As a software engineer I had to work 70 hours per week with no way to get a decent job for a salary between 20-30k euros (gross). When I severely burned out, I found the strength to leave the country and found a completely different work culture in Germany.

This to say: I'm not sure Italians will ever turn it around, still I sometimes think it would be nice to come back and try to change things, but it is incredibly hard given that most of the young people there either leave, they accept shitty jobs or have the same mentality of their parents.

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#137

Post by renjimen »

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.

Tax in Denmark is also very high (I keep ~50% of my salary) but there are a huge influx of graduates from around Europe because there are plenty of jobs, it's a very fair society, it's so comfortable to live here, English is widely spoken, and if you stick it out long enough to have kids you'll reap some of your taxed kroner back!

Salary is important, but there are many other factors (at least, among my non-Danish friends).

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#138

Post by TulliusCicero »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #128
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…

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

I'm guessing it's less just the high taxes, and more that people feel like they're not getting much for their high taxes. A common theme in any American article talking about the Nordic model, for example, is quotes from people saying, "yeah taxes are high, but at least the government provides a lot of useful stuff from that."

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#139

Post by Eug894 »

renjimen wrote: post #137
kabes wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tax in Denmark is also very high (I keep ~50% of my salary) but there are a huge influx of graduates from around Europe because there are plenty of jobs, it's a very fair society, it's so comfortable to live here, English is widely spoken, and if you stick it out long enough to have kids you'll reap some of your taxed kroner back! Salary is important, but there are many other factors (at least, among my non-Danish fr…

What is your estimate on how many of the Danish own land? Do people anticipate price of it growing faster than salaries in the near future?

Re: Brain Drain Within the EU?

#140

Post by NeedMoreTea »

petre wrote: post #108
KSteffensen wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to Denmark. It's been rated in the top 5 world wide on the 'ease of doing business' since 2012 and ahead of the USA since 2015. [1] Pretty much all bureaucracy happens online and my experience as an individual, is that it's minimal. I've never tried running a business , so I can't say anything on the bureaucracy there. We don't have that nice Southern France climate, though. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

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

Yet plenty of people have relocated to Denmark, Sweden etc because the extra quality of life is worth paying for.

I know two who did, neither now intend to ever come back to the UK with its austerity and constant wish to move in the US direction. One later got relocated by his firm from Denmark to Sweden.

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