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There’s no question that Iowa is suffering from brain drain. I mean, just look up from this page and glance around at your co-workers. Can you believe you’re on the same staff with those mopes?

However, we’re not alone in this problem. We feel a little bit discouraged about being on a sinking ship, and we wish we were on that nice ship over there, and then we look through the binoculars and notice that the other ship seems to be on fire.

Frequent guest opinion contributor Nick Reddin mentioned one day that his previous home, California, also is worried about a brain drain. This came as a shock. I didn’t know California ever worried about anything.

But here’s one piece of evidence from the Oakland Tribune. According to a 2007 article, The Public Policy Institute of California announced that the state “will lose economic ground unless it prepares its residents to become tomorrow’s college-educated work force. California is suffering a ‘brain drain,’ they said, losing educated residents to other states. With expensive housing making it difficult to attract and retain skilled workers, the state should not rely on college graduates from other places, they said.”

It’s unlikely that Iowa and California would ever be the only two states sharing a problem, so I did some research.

The results provided a whole new perspective on worry, and how to do it. Somewhere in a remote corner of the world, there must be a beautiful valley filled with extremely intelligent people, because they’re draining out of everyplace else. Consider these reports from various sources:

• Rhode Island: “A front-page story in the Providence Journal – headlined ‘RI exodus: Losing the young, ambitious’ described how this ‘brain drain’ has driven declines in the state population for the last three years.”

• Michigan: ” … which has been plagued by a dismal economy and job market that has prompted young people to flee the state for areas with better prospects, a phenomenon often called the brain drain.”

•Wisconsin: “The Wisconsin ‘brain drain’ has attracted occasional media attention for the past five years.”

• Kansas: “On the positive side, state universities award nearly 1 percent of the country’s science and engineering doctorate degrees. ‘But we have a brain drain,’ (an expert) said. ‘That’s the negative side of it.'”

• Ohio: “According to analysis, the better educated the graduates, the more elite the school that produced them and the more attractive their degrees for economic development, the more likely they are to leave.” And “Cincinnati’s young adults are growing up and moving out at alarming rates, a Cincinnati Enquirer analysis of census data shows.”

• Montana: “When you think of Montana’s top commodities, wheat or petroleum might come to mind. It turns out some of the state’s most critical exports just might be some of our best and brightest young people. Colleges and universities in Montana report after seniors graduate many are hitting the road and moving out of state.”

• Upstate New York: “First Lady Silda Wall Spitzer announced plans for a summit meeting to examine the causes for the exodus of talented young people from the state. The Brain Drain initiative will focus on addressing some of the challenges facing young Upstate New Yorkers.”

• Connecticut: “Connecticut is losing its status as a highly desirable place in which to live, work and raise a family … Reversing the brain drain will require throttling back on spending and taxes to help make the state friendlier to businesses, more affordable for young people and less attractive to parasites.”

One obvious question leaps to mind: Her name is Silda? One bit of previously unconsidered good news pops up: No one except soybean farmers ever worries about Iowa filling up with parasites.

And all in all it’s sort of comforting to realize that we’re not the only ones who have trouble keeping well-educated young people from escaping our clutches to see the world.

However, it would be small-minded to think only about Iowa; the United States as a whole is concerned about foreign-born brains that were brought here for education and are now being carted back to the countries they came from.

Mexico also worries about brain drain. So does Vietnam. Vietnam?

I was going to check on the situation in Liechtenstein, but I have to stop now. My brain feels kind of drained.