Would cutting income tax for young people stop the North's brain drain?

Poland has announced a dramatic tax policy:

Poles under the age of 26 who earn less than 85,528 Polish zloty ($22,547) a year will be exempt from the country's 18% income tax starting August 1. The allowance is generous, considering the average Polish salary stands at just below 60,000 zloty ($15,700) a year.

The aim of the policy is to try and stem the tide of young Poles that head for other countries - an estimated 1.7 million people left Poland in the past 15 years which, as the Polish PM observed, "It's as if the entire city of Warsaw left".

For those who have already left, especially the better educated (something like 750,000 graduates are in that 1.7 million figure), the incentive probably isn't good enough and they're likely to be earning more, even after tax, that they would in Poland even assuming there's a comparable job. But it might have two effects - to slow down the departure of young Poles in the future and to encourage new investment to exploit this pool of labour.

Which brings me to my question - could we use the same policy as a means of slowing down the "giant sucking sound" (to borrow from Ross Perot) of Northern graduates heading to London and the South-East? I'm not convinced it's a 'silver bullet' but it would add to the existing incentives of lower living costs especially for housing. It may even attract a few soft southern pansies like me up north! Worth a punt?

....

It's all Peppa Pig's fault isn't it?

Fruit & Veg shop in Radda in Chianti - featuring porcini, of course!

It seem that, in the European "eat up your greens now dear" league, us Brits are languishing near the bottom (or so the European Commission - green scoffers all - tell us):

Britons are not eating enough fruit and vegetables despite nutritional advice being widely available, a study suggests. A review of eating habits in 19 EU countries put the UK in 14th place*.

And, we're told that this is a problem - not eating up our greens puts us at risk:

The EUFIC said that high intakes of fruit and vegetables were associated with a lower risk of chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers.

Apparently the Poles are top (not surprising as the Polish diet does seem to consist largely of cabbage and potato). Which means that they're living longer of course? It would seem not - the average Briton (even with all those Glaswegians keeling over at 55) lives just over 79 years whereas the average Pole only makes it to his or her 76th year.

What about heart attacks then - eating up our greens means we don't get these doesn't it?

According to the latest WHO data published in April 2011 Coronary Heart Disease Deaths in Poland reached 79,036 or 26.93% of total deaths. The age adjusted Death Rate is 122.40 per 100,000 of population ranks Poland #78 in the world

..and the UK? The same source gives our age adjusted death rate as 68.8 per 100,000. More to the point, that is better that three of the four top green scoffers in Europe (Germany and Austria being the other two).

Maybe eating greens is good for us (certainly a diet without fruit and veg would be unbearably dull) but blandly reporting data - it seems pretty dodgy data - on eating greens seems to miss the point. Our life expectancy is rising, our rates of coronary heart disease are falling and yet we don't eat as much green stuff as places with a cultural predilection for cabbage.

Any way it's all Peppa Pig's fault isn't it?


*Most football supporters would prefer to characterise this position in the league as "mid-table" unless, of course, it is the team they hate, in which case it is "risking relegation".

....