Great reply, thanks.
Good luck with finding a plumber, an electrician, a doctor etc, who knows what the fuck he's doing, and is honest and trustworthy! I
Did you live there long enough to witness this drain? The logical flow of it makes sense, but I'm wary of too-simple explanations. For instance, in my place of origin we face a similar problem, and there are definitely forces at play that have hollowed the region out so that skilled tradespeople are few and far between, but I don't think you could make a case for it being because those people went to take cush government jobs.
It's kind of a death spiral, the government grows even faster, everything becomes expensive, the country becomes increasingly dependant on foreign aid (remittance, EU aid, etc) then a civil war erupts...
I know of a number of cyclical accounts of history or of development; I wonder if this particular one has been explored anywhere? Seems pretty easy to do empirically.
Did you live there long enough to witness this drain?
Oh Yes! Look at what's happening in Mayotte, or Lampedusa, etc... it's like at the us southern border. It's been happening slowly and gradually since the mid 90s, and then suddenly since 2015.
The first drain was actually in the early 60s, when tens of millions of settlers, mostly Europeans, were forced into exile. Several of them, especially in Algeria, had lived on the continent for many generations, side by side with natives. I mentioned it here: #419496
Completely different times!
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What’s happening at the Mexican border is not a brain drain. Many if not most are illiterate.
Mexico is not sending us their best.
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What is Syria biggest export, crude oil?
What caused mass migration in 2015? Civil war? ISIS?
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