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The migration patterns of the most talented people

Since US indie filmmaking has at least a little to do with job creation, this October '07 Gallup World Poll article might be of interest to filmmakers, producers, distributors & others involved in building & maintaining the industry. Two important items from the long article so far:

"Gallup is committed to conducting the World Poll for 100 years, but we may have already found the single most searing, clarifying, helpful, world-altering fact. If used appropriately, it may change how every leader runs his or her country. But at the very least, it needs to be considered in every policy, every law, and every social initiative. All leaders -- policy and law makers, presidents and prime ministers, parents, judges, priests, pastors, imams, teachers, managers, and CEOs -- need to consider it every day in everything they do.

What the whole world wants is a good job."

And:

"Twenty-five years ago, virtually every economist, liberal and conservative, forecast that the GDP of the United States would lose its first-place ranking and drop to third. News shows, newspapers, and business magazines predicted that Japan's GDP would be around $5 trillion, Germany's would be around $4 trillion, and the United States would fall to third at about $3.5 trillion by 2007.

The economists were partly right. Japan is at about $4.5 trillion, and Germany's at about $4 trillion too. But they couldn't have been more wrong about the United States. The country's GDP didn't fall. Over the last 25 years, it grew to $13 trillion. The best economists in the world were off by more than $10 trillion.

They were wrong because their economic models didn't include the most powerful variable of all: the migration patterns of the most talented people."

Read the rest of the article here.

- Sujewa

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