Comment by retired

4 hours ago

We are seeing the same in The Netherlands:

https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/fewer-phd-positions-and-...

https://www.sciencelink.net/features/its-not-just-about-mone...

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retired

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ixtli  4 hours ago

I believe the opposite is happening in China. I saw an article the other day ( https://fortune.com/2026/01/14/china-graduates-1-3-million-e... ) that showed how the amount of engineers being produced there is orders of magnitude greater than the US. Way above what you'd expect given the different sizes of population. Now, i realize an engineer isn't the same as a PhD but i think we're seeing a dramatic brain drain happening in the west.

  • retired  4 hours ago

    I’m not a PhD, just an engineer and I moved out of The Netherlands. It was no longer economical feasible to live there. I am very pessimistic about the future Western Europe. Right now it offers the one of the best QoL in the world for the average worker but who knows for how long. With the current brain and wealth drain there will no longer be enough people to support the social system.

    • rwyinuse  4 hours ago

      Right now I'm not sure there is a country where young people are generally satisfied and optimistic about their future. America is a mess, Europe is generally a mess, China is struggling with too many grads who aren't able to find jobs matching their qualifications... From what I've heard things aren't exactly great in India either.

      Every country has its problems.

      4 replies →

    • tasuki  4 hours ago

      Where did you move? I understand you're retired: that changes the situation somewhat.

      When I lived in Amsterdam, we were renting a flat. The gentleman we were renting from told us our rent easily covers all his expenses in South East Asia.

      3 replies →

    • Izikiel43  4 hours ago

      Yeah, I was chatting with a friend living in Spain once, and ascending the ladder in responsibility didn't make sense, as whatever salary increase he got would be heavily taxed, and it didn't make sense to bear much more responsibility for just a little bit of extra money a year.

      As you say, avg workers are "fine" there, but for anyone trying to standout or grow in their career, they will hit an income ceiling very fast due to the high taxation, so it doesn't make sense to keep on growing as you are not properly rewarded for it.

    • surgical_fire  4 hours ago

      The Netherlands had effectively full employment until a few years ago, last I checked.

      Unless things got dramatically worse in the past 3 or so years, I think you are massively overreacting.

      I happen to have a few personal friends that live there, for that matter.

      5 replies →

  • CharlieDigital  4 hours ago

    There was an interesting Freakonomics podcast a few months back that pointed out an interesting divide in how the US and China thinks about its leaders[0].

        > China is a country that is run by engineers, while the U.S. is a country run by lawyers. Engineers, he explains, are driven to build while lawyers are driven to argue, and obstruct.

    Even Trump:

        > And even though Donald Trump is not a lawyer by any means, I think he is still a product of the lawyerly society, because lawsuits have been completely central to his business career. He has sued absolutely everyone. He has sued business partners, he has sued political opponents, he has sued his former lawyers as well. And there is, I think, something still very lawyerly about Donald Trump in which he is flinging accusations left and right, he’s trying to intimidate people, trying to establish guilt in the court of public opinion

    Very interesting take and I think insightful on why the US is the way it is today and sidesteps the democracy vs autocracy debate.

    [0] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...

    • fdw  4 hours ago

      The episode was based on the book Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang (Amazon: China's Quest to Engineer the Future)

      Very interesting read, with a lot more depth and details to this short (but accurate) summary.

  • amelius  4 hours ago

    It is because China has a meritocratic system.

    • ixtli  4 hours ago

      Maybe. I would like to think that is true but i don't have much evidence.

      I think what we can see provably is that China is investing in the development of STEM contributors at the primary school level through advanced degrees and the central government is directing the economy to spend huge amounts on the work that they do.

    • weirdmantis69  4 hours ago

      I'm very curious about this because even tho we need to preserve democracy, some elements of meritocracy also seem needed. Obviously as Xi's latest purges show, there is some politics to it as well, but China does seem to do a fairly good job of meritocracy in the bureaucracy.

      1 reply →