[2banana]

Europe's best and brightest scientific minds are leaving in droves for the U.S. — and billions of euros and thousands of jobs are at stake. Here's how Europe is trying to lure them back

Smart and hard working people figured out that life under capitalism is alot better than life under socialism.

"Socialism is the system of the lazy" - Jozef Lieskovsky, my uncle, after working a lifetime in a European socialism.

[muawiyah]

Follow the Money In the spring of 2002, after three productive years of research at the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly in the U.S. state of Indiana, Matthias Tschöp went home. Leaving the country he calls "a paradise" for scientists was hard, says Tschöp, who studies hunger-related hormones. "I thought about staying, but I'm German. That's where I belong and where I should contribute."

Now, let's see, the population of the state of Indiana is probably pretty much 45-65% German extraction (depending on where you are and when). Then there's upwards of 10% Hungarian.  That's virtually the same as most of Germany!

So, where did this guy with a Hungarian name get the idea that he belonged in Deutschland just because he had a German and/or Hungarian ancestor or two and not the American Midwest anyway?

Bet he never took any American history courses in his life.

[Tribune7]

Culture without freedom will die. Understand that freedom and democracy are not synonymous.

[Helms]

Let Gwenneth Paltrow and other Hollywood celebs leave and let the better talent immigrate to the US. Hollywood has shitted on its own doorstep (USA) and is largely responsible for the disease of Postmodernism.

[BlazingArizona]

Just maybe, if Europeans didn't bash their biological researchers' heads in with cricket bats, they might not be so eager to leave!

Oh, and a tax cut wouldn't hurt, either.

[bobjam]

The problem is priorities. Eurocrats want to use science and research to create products and use the profit to continue funding their welfare state. Americans use science and research to create products that grow private enterprise.
In the mid-60's, researchers at the University of Florida created a sports drink and dubbed it "Gatorade"- in honor of the school mascot and Professor Cade. Now Gatorade is a major product line with many jobs attached to it. Furthermore, Gatorade sales generate research dollars for UF and many other places. In today's Europe, non of that would have happened. The government would try to sell the product in an effort to generate funds for its welfare programs. The researchers who created it would not share in the profits and royalties. And they wonder why they have a brain drain.

[doc30]

Perhaps someone here can tell me if this is true. I've heard that, in certain European countries, particularly France for example, that it is against the law to profit from new drug discoveries. THe law was based upon the idea that a drug to treat or cure an illness must be available for the betterment of human kind, not to line the pockets of corporations. This fits in with the views of prosecutors mentioned in the article: if you collaborate with industry, you are compromising your research for coporate rewards. In European (a.k.a. socialist) morality, that is a sin. Research is for research's sake and for the betterment of humanity, not for personal gain.

However the article doesn not discuss how even corporate R&D is moving from the E.U. to the U.S. becasue of less red tape and taxes (little tax relief for R&D in Europe compared to the U.S.), fewer environmental restrictions, access to a greater pool of good scientists and presence in the same market as most of the major scientific instrument manufacturers (to avoid the tariffs and customs hassles of obtaining research materials from the U.S.).

[<1/1,000,000th%]

See. Scientists are smart.

[agitator]

"Only if we manage to keep our innovation at the top will we be able to reach a level of prosperity that will allow us to keep our welfare system in today's changing conditions."


Speaks for itself.

[Tacis]

I'm sure the Eurinals can fix thius problem and maintain their superiority. It seems to me that all they have to do is establish and build some multinational commissions to oversee the work of these talented researchers. Key positions would rotate among the member countries and governanvce would be propartional to actual national R & D budgets (except the French and Germans who would provide unaudited numbers). Each of these commissions would be located in the key cities in which the uberbureacrats wished to reside. The opportunities for bribes, kickbacks, payoffs and under the counter payments for research findings would be extraordinary. The solutions, actually, is simply the basic way the Eurinals handle everything.

[jpl]

Old Europe is more and less finished, and I'm not sure that it's really worth saving at this point.

[xJones]

"Only if we manage to keep our innovation at the top will we be able to reach a level of prosperity that will allow us to keep our welfare system in today's changing conditions."

You go, Gerhardt! And may Europe send all it's underfunded, underpaid scientists here. Those are the kind of legal immigrants we need.

[DeuceTraveler]

America, the real European Union.