> Of course, I've seen it within regions of the US. Imagine how insane it would be to say that NY city should resist hiring workers from NJ because it hurts small NJ towns.

Yes, how insane would it be if some entity or some coordination between the two states existed that would allow both to prosper, in the eventuality that it became true that New Jersey human capital was leaking into New York? Not too insane, I imagine. Do you want New York not to feel responsible for the incentives it creates in the region? Or New Jersey to feel happy to leak generations? Maybe New York could but New Jersey and just use it a breeding grounds. Maybe administer their schools and hospitals.

> My experience is that the root cause of brain drain is the regional government.

The regional government of New Jersey did not not make New York the center of the world. It's a feedback loop.

> keeping talented individuals there only stifles the growth of those individuals

Find a use for them. It's people that could build community bonds. Would you say the person with the best potential should be placed where they can enact the most impact in the world? How about every 25 years we scout the world for the latest litter of humans and shuffle them about to where they can have the most impact? Sounds like a great reductio ad absurdum, we could take all the "talented individuals" (borderline eugenics here, be careful) and just shove them into the best pipelines. People are just talents, are they? They are not. It's not a closed matter. That countries bordering (lol, India?) the UK leak good people is something for India to prevent and for the UK to notice what it signals to the locals. Not to be ignored and up to the free market, free flow of capital (human or not).

> [exfiltrate?] Of course!

Another path is to understand that things create feedback loops, and the feedback loop of "people leave" is "governments have no plans for people that leave". You seem to have it down to "let's ignore the present and let things even out later". It's an answer, in that letting a fire burn down is an answer to a fire. It's giving up. Just be clear in your answers: "everyone, listen, we do not care about your particular situations and your particular worries today, because tomorrow someone will have managed to reach the future and live there, and it will be good for the economy and for them, maybe. Die out, emigrate, I can't care any less."

> [incentivize young workers to leave their native countries?] My experience both locally and globally is that talent staying in an area that is in decline only hurts the talent. Typically it is the governments of failing countries that try to halt immigration out first.

I mentioned nothing that implied I would halt immigration. I raise concerns I hoped you would agree with. Instead, you welcome them. Your experience is the experience of a factory. Inputs, outputs, time passes. Life is not a factory, it's the shared day to day. Yes, let's make everyone believe the standard is to move around, not to make places livable.

> Would you not encourage a brilliant student from an area of the UK in decline to head off to London to further their career?

One person. We discuss incentives at the scale of countries. The purpose of the area of the UK in decline is not to decline.

> if the town does not improve then they at least don't waste their skills.

Yes, why would anyone waste their skills by living with their families. Maybe people should even be made to forget they have families, if it dampens their individual intuition (lol) to go where they can best be exploited by whatever is built there.

> Again, I live in the US

Ok.

> I think by definition nobody wants to "degrade the social fabric", and I'm not sure what you mean by this? Do you mean you don't want foreign people mixing with your locals?

You managed to include the implication of xenophobia, leading me to conclude you think you are replying to a brexiter/maga/casteist/generic xenophobe monster, which I do not consider myself to be and have not given any hint of being, and which is not the only kind of voice that would raise these concerns. The social fabric I meant was 1) the one in the countries of origin that lose their young to the economic advancement of the UK and 2) the UK's, that sees the arrival of young workers as a solution. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34067699

> Can you point to a single example of a country that has halted immigration and "fixed what leads to a lack of workers?"

I repeat that I suggested no halting. I raised the concerns I believe reasonable to have. You disagree with those concerns and call them reasons to proceed with importing young workers.

Yes. Let's just proceed. And we can't ever move fast enough.