the best are leaving the country.

Filipino programmer salaries are pretty terrible (about 35k PHP per month, which is around $10,000 per year) but not all of the best are leaving. The US is pretty damn hard to get into if you're not from a family with assets. Japan treats Filipinos like shit (it's functionally impossible, and I've heard it may be illegal, to look for another job while employed, as a non-citizen, with a Japanese firm). Hong Kong and Singapore pay more than $10k, but still offer crap wages compared to the sky-high cost-of-living, thanks to third-world despots, corrupt officials, drug kingpins, and assorted dirtbags from all over the world buying real estate in those cities (as in London and New York) to launder their money. Singapore and HK are also disgustingly employer-friendly (worse than the US, not quite as bad as the Arab slave states). I know Hong Kongers who count themselves lucky to get 2 weeks of paid vacation (taking unpaid leave is very stigmatized in Asia).

I won't even get into the Arab slave states, where Indians and Bangladeshis "look like construction workers" (and won't advance) and Filipinos "look like maids" (ditto) and even Americans have mini-panic-attacks every time they write a check (an unintentional bounced check equals jail; someone should seriously fucking invade that country and liberate the people jailed for being unlucky).

Australia seems to be the hot destination for Asian talent-- nearby, not that hard to get into, and paying quite well-- but it's a small country (24 million, which makes it smaller than some Asian cities) and will not be able to absorb all of the underemployed smart people coming up right now.

I've actually been studying this, because it involves a business opportunity I'm looking into. About 30-50% of the people you'd consider "top talent" leave the Philippines. That's a lot of brain drain, but it leaves a large number who (for a variety of reasons, such as family or patriotism or preference of the tropical climate) stay. Right now, they're getting shit wages unless they can start their own business (but if your family has that kind of assets, emigrating to the US becomes a real option).

Education does not equal talent.

Sure. That is true everywhere in the world, and I think we agree on that.

The fact that the problem of the corrupt concentration of capital is real doesn't mean the lack of talent is artificial.

Talent is abundant but it's extremely difficult to find, because you have to sift through untalented pretenders with better social skills, and that's true no matter where you are in the world. (You typically need to hire someone like me who are smart and experienced enough to assess it, and we're even harder to find.) It's like dating. Decent, single $GENDER_OF_INTEREST are paradoxically both common (the bulk number of them is large) and rare (the broken people go on more dates, so adverse selection plays a role).

Why do large companies, when staffing middle and upper management roles, acqui-hire utter mediocrity at panic prices instead of promoting from within? Their middle management filters are too broken to let them spot talent at the bottom, and they become like hoarders who have copious possessions but have to buy a new coat each winter because their houses are out of order.

Talent is like fresh water. It's abundant, globally speaking, but (a) it's sometimes far away, (b) there's a lot of less-fresh water one shouldn't use or drink, and (c) there's still less of it than one might conceivably want.

Of course, I've stepped around the obvious fact that most businesspeople who complain about a "talent shortage" are just stingy bastards who can't stand the (slowly rising) price of talent.