| There's an implicit assumption in the article and the comments here that "brain drain the world" is a free lunch. But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? Aside from anything else, the other countries become less able to trade on good terms, and thus less able to buy US products/services. And so it becomes a self-defeating policy long-term. Good economists (and to be honest I don't know of many these days) know that there are no free lunches. We need to put as much effort into helping every other country develop and thrive - and by doing that we'll create many more customers for the products/services produced in our own countries, and everyone can end up richer. After writing this I wonder even if the economic and political dysfunction we're seeing in so much of the world as actually the inevitable consequence of decades of brain-draining, rather than an indication of the need for more of it. |
I know of more than one example where someone has been “brain-drained” to the states, who has subsequently moved back to start a successful business. Sometimes leveraging gained contacts directly, sometimes leveraging the newfound experience and knowledge.
Whether this works out this way depends on how open the world (or at least the respective countries between each other) is when it comes to movement of people, money, and trade.