The EU has over 500 million people in a landmass that is less than half the size of the US. Does the EU really need to import workers from overseas given how overpopulated it is relative to its landmass size? If the EU was the size of the US, it's population would be 1.2 billion people. Similar to china and india. Why aren't they able to find the workers locally? Is it poor planning? Did they not train enough tech workers? Just doesn't make sense.
if you want the 7 best software engineers on earth, statistically 1.4 of them are in china, 1.2 in india etc, only 0.5 of them are in Europe. So you import the others. Only you want the 7 million best software engineers (plus other engineers, doctors, lawyers, writers, artists, scientists, teachers etc)
That assumes being the best software engineer is a trait you're born with rather than something you learn. That's unlikely.
It's much more likely that the best software engineers are concentrated in places where everyone receives a very high level of education. As education varies massively across the world, the best software engineers probably aren't distributed based on population sizes.
I can see where you're coming from, but the reason i ignored the distribution function is that it's very complex. You're right that education is a factor. But it's only one. If you took 2 (groups of) prospective software engineers, would the fact that India is a poor country, with a lot more respect for engineers, where education is much more demanding and less accommodating not mean you ended up with better (more robust, more independent, better at working without assistance) engineers from the Indian group that the other group?
And even if India only produces say one tenth the rate of great engineers that the EU does, you still want those!
Im actually more than happy to admit the other side too by the way: it drives me nuts when politicians commit to be tough on immigration except for skilled immigrants of course. Why am I or you competing for jobs and getting lower salaries because we got on and got educated but an unskilled labourer deserves a monopoly? I'm just saying, there are plenty of great people in every country. The quick path to improve home is to get them to come here.
"India[...] where education is much more demanding and less accommodating not mean you ended up with better (more robust, more independent, better at working without assistance) engineers from the Indian group that the other group?"
I've never heard anyone ever online or in person praise Indian universities or describe Indian workers on average as more independent. The descriptions that I'm aware of are far less flattering, including from Indians themselves.
What are the above statements based on? Is there any university ranking or study you can reference?
"I'm just saying, there are plenty of great people in every country. The quick path to improve home is to get them to come here."
The wise thing to do is support local workers and train them to become better instead of stealing the "brains" of another country. Western Europe already did this with Eastern Europe, and those countries are significantly poorer for it, because a huge chunk of their intellectual elites have left their respective countries.
I think you massively underestimate the training required to become "good" doctors, lawyers, engineers, finance people, political scientists, professors etc.
Folks specializing in these areas aren't really interchangeable. Thus, having a small number of "good" in each of these still starves demand.
Why not let those people live in their countries with their families, friends, cultures and traditions, and simply import the amazing software they're going to write?
The idea that the we need to concentrate the best people in a few cities in the west is both absurd and dangerous.
By that logic, the US has many unemployed people and many, many people earning low wages in low productivity industries. Why not just train them properly rather than import workers from elsewhere?
I agree. I don't think we should be importing any workers. We have 330 million people and that should be plenty. Importing workers disincentivizes US elites from developing our own local work force. And importing workers hurts the nation that is losing workers. Shouldn't all the indian tech workers be used in india to help india develop? Isn't it morally wrong for a wealthy nation like the US ( or wealthy political entity like the EU ) to leech indian workers since it hurts india? I keep hearing that "brain drain" is a bad thing by the media. And yet, the media celebrates brain drain when it comes to india, china, etc. Why?
And if I think the US has enough people to fill its workforce needs, then it applies even more to the EU since the EU has 200 million more people in a much smaller space.
Instead of bringing in foreign workers, shouldn't the EU be asking why it can't fill the jobs from 500+ million people? Don't you think 500 million people is a big enough pool from which to draw your workforce?
Going by your logic, EU will have to build their own Coca Cola, Pepsi, Facebook, Google, and what not.
And China or India is not going to buy any of your products.
Is this how you want it to be?
Globalization predicates that capital and goods are procured from places where they are readily available. It is what the post-WWII world was built on. Global trade may break apart to some extant due to the nationalism resurge, but economies of scale is real and smart businesses will leverage that.
In Europe we have Coca Cola, Pepsi, Facebook and Google without having half of their staff working and living there.
This is the traditional way of doing business: we put stuff on big ships and send them in other countries.
You're arguing for migration of people / labor, which is a different thing. And I don't quite see why we need knowledge workers to move in particular places. Asians have done extremely well with semiconductors, for example. We did not need to relocate 200,000 Taiwanese workers in Europe, but we can still buy their chips.
Wow, 330 million cannot work today. I would recommend finding out how many adult individuals are there in the labor force. Do the same for EU.
You'll soon realize there just aren't enough to support so many industries.
I can speak for the US about how labor shortage affects every one. US has the craziest doctor residency programs. This ultimately causes a massive massive shortage of doctors. This affects society in unbelievable ways. There are so many people who could've done so much more, but can't do so because they need specialized treatment. The doctors for these aren't available quickly enough. By the time doctors are available and treatment is done, these folks are defeated and depleted mentally and financially.
How did the artificial shortage work out?
Same applies for a lot of industries. If you want to work in ALL the industries, you need the best in ALL the industries and 500 million (which is aging rapidly) won't cut it at all. Especially when you are competing with China.
2) the (doctors) who decide on the doctor residency programs and also reap the income of financially depleting folks?
Now truth be told, there is a quality argument to be made here. 2) is the only thing guaranteeing that IF you do get treatment, it is at an acceptable standard. They ALSO use it for personal wealth of course, but also for quality. And this is medical care, bad quality destroys more lives and causes more misery than the author of Doom can imagine. Just take that time when they accidentally (really) disfigured ~50000 babies as an example. Yes really, accidentally. As in "oops, chirality really matters".
Are you trying to say that due to the selective nature of medicine, all doctors are already rockstars?
Or
Are you trying to say that all doctors need to he neurosurgeon level smart?
Either way is wrong. Doctors can be a spectrum of quality. The more the doctors for routine checkups and treatments, more and more rockstars doctors can be freed to do rockstar activities.
The current shortage may be great economically for current doctors, but it sucks for you, I, kids and everyone that needs those services
That's part of the right approach. The US should - to the extent possible - be very aggressive in uptraining its workforce, while simultaneously importing all of the best talent from overseas that wants to come to the US. There's more than enough economy to do both things.
Because businesses are too greedy and noticed that they can import cheaper workers or outsourcing and the politicians are letting them get away with it.
The US should absolutely improve its education and social safety net. :-/ The average American Joe is getting screwed so much by the politicians and businessmen that it makes even people like me which have never set foot in the US sad.
