ICD welcome.
This wonderful thread covers everything from basic economics of a wild west settlement to the world in 2011.
I have to use analogies because as an engineer I don't fully understand how we got to the present state in economics, it really does look like a big con trick to me.
The wild west farmer digs his fields, the carpenter makes the furniture, the candlestickmaker and baker, horse breeder and tailor, all bartering, that I grasp. I arrive with IOUs saying I have gold back in New England to back up the IOUs which they can change anytime. The townsfolk borrow $1000 each and promise to repay me $1200 a year later, in goods or in IOUs. In fact they all pay me with goods as they have an excess, and use the IOUs to trade with the other producers.
At the end of a few years my IOUs are in circulation as a means of exchanging goods & sevices, and I'm getting a free living, I don't make anything or give any service other than keeping my notebook of who owes me. More importantly no one knows that I have no gold or backing my IOUs are just pieces of paper.
Moral: Bankers, insurance, financial advisers, mortgage brokers, dress it up any way you like, they are all living off the rest of us, they make nothing and expect to live like millionaires.
Jeremy, thanks for the old engine stuff, we'll be down with the sassenachs in July.. Mirrlees Blackstone, ..ahh when Britain led the world, you have to work on these things to appreciate engineering.
Strangely those huge diesel engines, I mean 10 foot high, 20 foot long 16 cylinders, are still made by Sulzer, in Switzerland. Asea Brown Boveri are based in Swizerland, competing with Siemens in electrical engineering, in fact there are more Swiss people working in mechanical and electrical engineering than in their financial sector. Should I add Nestle, and a few big Phrma companies, also Swiss and not financial.
UK used to have Ruston diesels, Paxman, English Electric and I think even Perkins is now a subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc, USA... and someone said Tony don't be downhearted, if the Swiss can make diesels why can't we?
To digress a bit, they have Nestle and we've just lost Cadburys, we don't make our own chocolate. They still make watches, I'm wearing a Tissot..
Patrick Moyhan
Yes skills and training, not sure about the "quite simply" perhaps skills & training in miracles might be appropriate.