Prof

I meant to say those who lack the required skills and education to get a job.

We have a state education system for around 93 per cent of the population so the state is to blame. But the state is represented by generations of politicians at the DfEE (or whatever acronym it is using this week) and local councillors. Teacher Training Colleges... the whole apparatus. Plus the idiots who keep electing incompetent politicians, parents, teachers, head teachers, boards of governors... There is enough blame to go around. More important is what can be done?

The service sector does not have a monopoly of rip-offs. What about the endless sales of sofas at half price? Does anyone ever pay full price? How many stories do you know about shoddy construction work?

Anything sold is the buyer's cost and that includes manufactured goods bought by service industries and consumers! If manufacturers are being ripped off by service industries they can either import services from the East Asian sweat shops or they can set up their own captive service industries. In fact this was once very common: as for example in a factory canteen being staffed by employees of the manufacturer.

Bashing the service sector is fun but pretty pointless.

We need to promote probity and where that is lacking we need properly enforced regulation.

Anonymous 2 needed this 'Off the Record'

Jeremy Bosk
Thank you for the above, will have a look at it tomorrow.
Just giving you an a example of rip off Britain, this time on the IT side.
BBC News politics 28/07/2011
IT giants 'ripping off Whitehall' say MPs.
Government departments have been ripped off by a "cartel" of big IT firms, a damning report by a Committee of MPs has found.
The last Labour Government spent £16b in IT projects in 2009.
It came under particular criticism for the spiralling cost of its delayed NHS scheme, which eventually reached £12.

Prof Eman

Researching electronic equipment in the last few days, a few items of note.
A firm called Lust, German firm making a large range of sophisticated electronic automation equipment.
A firm called Schunk, also German, make pneumatic finger grippers for robotic handling.
A firm called Endress & Hauser, also German, make level detectors for tanks of liquid.
In my field Germany and Japan have most of the market. As I work on various automation items it seems clear that we can never make things at this level ever again, the world has moved on, billions have been invested, while we went for "services".
I was surprised to see that some of these companies have offices in Singapore, Dubai, China & India but not in the UK, we are not even in the game any more.
I have a question..Anonymous 2 post #214 How do they measure services output? I can see if you make a thousand bikes at £100 each, there's an output. What if a bank, a building society, an insurance firm, a stockbroker, manipulates a £million and gains £10,000, possibly at my or someone else's expense, is that considered "output"?

Anonymous 2 needed this 'Off the Record'

engineertony
If someone paid somebody £5000, to murder some-one, that would show as £5000 on services output. i.e. anything paid for a service, irrespective how useful or acceptable the service is. Money value of anything provided, which people want to pay for.
This is the rub. Output and GDP can be growing, but in the wrong way.
Jeremy Bosk
My argument is that the economy has been growing in the wrong way, i.e. the services way, both on the public and private side, to the extent that as engineertony puts it, we are not in the game anymore.
As regards, your #22 post, TheCityUK, under About Us, they make their position clear-object, Domestic Promotion, and Overseas Promotion. As such this is promotion material, not some well defined and independent study, and secondly, even if their figures are correct it does not mean that the GDP resulting is good for the UK, particularly in the long term.
In light of the latest recession, services contribution needs to be questioned.

Prof Eman

Jeremy Bosk, engineertony, Prof et al

I have been reading all the contributions over the last few weeks and many interesting viewpoints have emerged. The result is a dichotomy that seems to suggest we can have a successful economy based either on services or on manufacturing and that the current economy is an unbalanced mix of the two.

Well so it is: And the crucial issue is how to rebalance it so we have less debt and retain more benefit. But that is what all the Western economies are trying to do - even Germany. When we look at the enormous debts that Europe and the USA have built up it is clear the whole of the developed West is going through a process of de-industrialisation. The service economy which is replacing it relies on debt financing because too much of its output is absorbed internally. This is really what is driving up national debts - and the USA debt is rising on an exponential curve. It just cannot continue.

The Bank of England web site has a video purportedly explaining what quantitative easing means - they admit to printing money electronically. Their purpose is to keep inflation running at 2% per annum - not less or more - because politicians are scared of deflation. The Industrial revolution in the UK and the USA has been well documented but it is interesting to note that over the period from 1800 to 1900 the cost of a basket of goods worth £100 fell to just £67; a huge benefit to Great Britain. In the 100 years since, however, inflation has moved the other way and that 1900 £100 basket now costs £9100.

Whereas during the Industrial Revolution Britain had local cheap labour, local raw materials (coal and iron), cheap raw materials from its colonies and a huge captive market in the colonies for the goods it produced, we are seeing a reversal in many if not all these respects. The 20th Century service economy cannot replace that era because information and money (its principal raw materials) are now available everywhere through communication technology and international banking - and there is a huge competitively educated workforce outside the UK that can use these raw inputs just as effectively as we can.

The so-called third world economies are going through their own industrial revolutions and we cannot compete with them on that basis. The developed economies are now absorbing third world output just as the colonies in the 19th Century did - not because they cannot produce it technically but because it is more profitable for the global companies involved. The real problem is global corporations acting as economic nation states. They have taken advantage of every resource and cost advantage available. Politicians seem to think that is OK but the damage this is doing to our economic infrastructure and social cohesion is enormous.

The question at the top of this forum could have said "Money v Making stuff - How can Britain control the global corporation?"