The Brain Drain Revisited

In the previous post I tackled the brain drain problem: highly skilled and thus “brainy” Canadians moving to the United States in search of better pay or careers.

Let’s examine that highly skilled equating to brainy assumption for a minute. Does no one in the press recognize that highly skilled does not necessarily mean brainy? Remember the stereotypical ‘absent minded professor’. It’s not hard to get the idea of someone being well trained in one category of intelligence while being sadly lacking in other areas. Indeed, I think this is what the ‘absent minded professor’ stereotype is meant to illustrate.

So, the Canadian “brains” might be deciding to move due to an impaired judgment process in their non-specialty areas like lifestyle.

Let’s look at one important stat. The murder rate. You need a fairly large city to compare murder rates with, because smaller centers can vary widely, year to year.

So I’ll take the biggest city in Canada, Toronto, and note that that city had a steady murder rate over the two years of 2000 and 2001 of 61 murders in both years. Now which American city to compare with? Here comes the art in this comparison. Detroit has roughly the same population and is also a Great Lake city. Indeed these two cities are connected by a 5 hour drive. The murder rate for 2000 was 396 in Detroit and 398 for 2001. That means you have about a 6 times greater chance of being murdered in Detroit than Toronto.

Maybe you feel this is an unfair comparison. I guess it is. On average the American murder rate is only 3 times that of Canada’s. I just can’t help comparing Detroit and Toronto because I live on the road between these two cities.

Want to live the longest life possible? That, too, might be a consideration of these so called “brains”. In a recent year, Canada’s average life expectancy was 78.1 years. The U.S.? 76.8 years was the average.

And now, if our “brains” pay attention, the economy in the current recession has been better up here than down south. Sure your job may be offering more. But if you are planning the move with family, the others might not fare as well as you.

So here you are “brains”. three good reasons not to move south of the border. Don’t worry if none of these reasons are your specialty – I checked for you. But then again some of you are probably so “idiot-savant” my coaxing and attempting to reason with you is probably lost.

Hey, maybe those of us left here are meant to be in an intellectually better rounded populace.