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We also shifted largely into a service based economy, shutdown a lot of mines and mills (for better or for worse) which were primarily more north based. More t

We also shifted largely into a service based economy, shutdown a lot of mines and mills (for better or for worse) which were primarily more north based. More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking, as there was no relevant industry to pick them up... and as someone with several postdoctoral degrees, yet no house or meaningful assets... who could blame them for going into banking in this large miserable sprawl of a city utterly devoted to it?

graemep 2y ago
Most developed economies have shifted to services. Its a natural progression that results from higher productivity and higher wages. I think the big problem is too much reliance on on service sector.
- asplake 2y ago
  A natural progression and not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes further productivity growth more difficult.
- EarlKing 2y ago
  It's a consequence of companies outsourcing to countries where they can get away with slave labor and a complete lack of environmental regulation. There's nothing natural about it.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    It's basically a modern form of economic colonialism replacing the old style of colonialism with ships, guns and slaves in chains. The brutal hard work gets done off-shore for poor pay and the spoils(profits) get shipped to the western finance capitals of the world where people who put in little effort get the cream. It's still dependent on rich countries having historical leverage (economic, political and especially military) over the poor countries where the dirty manufacturing and hard labor happens, rather than based on any meritocracy.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      Or how trade made places rich... Well you always have the buyer and seller. And less they get and more they pay worse is it for them... Trade has value generation, but also exploitation and extraction...
    - graemep 2y ago
      Not true. Those countries have become a lot richer. The transformation in standards of living since the 80s has been spectacular in many countries. The biggest drag on that has been the profits being taken by the wealthy in those countries. The west does not have he position it used to. There are a lot of British workers working for Indian capitalists. China's manufacturing is mostly Chinese owned. In a lot of other places the forreign ownership is Asian, not western. The west no longer dominates the world although westerners have been slow to bting themselves to acknowledge this.
  - deltarholamda 2y ago
    Exactly this. Don't think of it as "moving to a service-based economy", think of it as "outsourcing manufacturing and resource extraction". They are two sides of the same coin, but people tend to only look at the one shiny side. Like any race to the bottom, it works great until you hit the bottom. Only now you don't have any of the fundamental industry, and you've lost all of the domain knowledge of those industries. Short-term thinking is incredibly seductive.
    - ANewFormation 2y ago
      It also creates this weird power imbalance. 'Advanced economies' are supposed to be just that, yet 'developing economies' cutting off their grain, steel and manufacturing is a far bigger threat than an advanced economy cutting off digital services, luxury goods, and financial markets.
      - nine_k 2y ago
        But "advanced" means "gone farther in a particular direction", not "more powerful", "independent", or some such. Mostly it's about giving the population more comfort. Equally, staying on a sofa can give you more comfort than hitting a gym, but it usually does not make you stronger.
  - graemep 2y ago
    Its not that simple. The UK experts a lot of manufactured goods to exactly those sorts of countries, and imports a lot from the EU and the US. What you say is true of cheap consumer goods, but remember everything else. Even with some consumer goods, its pretty even - the UK exports cars about as much as it imports (by value, not numbers though). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers/uk-trade-in-numbers-web-version#import-statistics https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers... Its other big goods exports are things that are not that visible to consumers.
    - EarlKing 2y ago
      Are you sure you want to get into everything else? Because I could've sworn we just had a major controversy with Vivek Ramaswamy running his mouth about the supposed laziness of American workers to justify racial discrimination against them through mass hiring of H1B workers... a stance so obviously wrong it forced his exit from the Trump administration. He certainly wasn't referring to people employed producing "cheap consumer goods", and there's nothing natural about the shift to the use of H1B labor. Just to be clear, though: This phenomenon is not unique to the United States. Imperialists everywhere try to pit one people against another to maintain power and extract maximum value for minimum input. Just once I'd like the bourgeoisie-adjacent to acknowledge political reality.
      - graemep 2y ago
        We were talking about the UK. Since Brexit immigration policy has shifted to favouring highly skilled workers, especially skills in short supply, over cheap labour. There are definitely people here who think like that, and we do still import cheap labour for some things (difficult low paying jobs), that British people “will not do” ( which means ”will not do for minimum wage”) but in general we have had what the govt and central bank call “wage inflation”. We are also talking about the north of England and non-EU immigrants strongly prefer certain areas, tilted to the South. Where I live I see few non-white faces.
    - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
      We have been running a negative current account balance for decades now. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/hbop/pnbp https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpay...
  - nine_k 2y ago
    OK, let it be not outsourcing to places with lower cost of labor, but to machines. There are whole factories that are operated by half-dozen people who mostly oversee its interaction with other human-run systems, such as trucks. It will still keep most population away from industrial production. Same thing happened is agriculture a century ago, when machines made 90% of agricultural workers redundant, and huge farms are run by half-dozen people. (Wait until AI will make a ton of service workers redundant.)
    - EarlKing 2y ago
      OK, sounds good... hey, you're going to pay taxes on those machines, right? Because no business operates in a vacuum. Gotta pay for that military, police, and fire that allow you to continue operating. Think of it as the labor element of the manufacturing sector shifting to the defense sector. It's natural. :D
      - vkou 2y ago
        Machines can't go on strike, and don't need to be ordered back to work at gunpoint. The part of the defense sector allocated to manufacturing was much bigger prior to automation.
- PicassoCTs 2y ago
  The problem is de-industrialization gets your society dependent on authoritarians who rent out there slaves to the lowest bidder and who then can wield you like a puppet. And the focusing on a more abstract economy- produces a inability to even perceive physical products, limitations and overall reality and the world. If everything is an abstraction, then problems like climate change, running out of energy or societal instability, surely can be doctored, narrated and abstracted away. And they cant. Which is a fundamental incompetence that is pretty obvious by now. One stuck in such a delusion, would imagine it optimal to blast furnace a mountain of money towards "elegant" formulas, unable to perceive, that those formulas at the end of the day have to produce fertilizer to feed a world of billions even when the crops fail.
Cumpiler69 2y ago
>More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking How does one get hired into banking with a physics degree? For what kinds of jobs? Where I live right now you only get into banking with a economics/business degree. Anything else and your resume goes in the bin.
- jakey_bakey 2y ago
  Stem degrees are pretty high rated
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    That's a vague answer that doesn't answer my specific question. I also have a STEM degree (electrical engineering) but would never be considered for finance roles.
    - gostsamo 2y ago
      data. stem people can do math and data analysis.
    - jwiz 2y ago
      Physics math has high overlap with Finance math.
    - growse 2y ago
      I have a chemistry degree and an entire career doing software / system engineering in financial services. I've also hired a boatload of people with STEM degrees. In fact (massive generalisation warning) I prefer hiring them to those with computer science degrees.
      - Cumpiler69 2y ago
        How does one pivot into finance with a stem degree and computer engineering experience? What are you looking for in a resume and what's the interview process like?
JanisErdmanis 2y ago
> More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking This does not seem to be a specific phenomenon. Only a few of my former PhD condensed matter physics colleagues did not end up in finance.
spacebanana7 2y ago
> More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking This is why I advise people to never study physical sciences or non-software engineering. There just aren’t many jobs for it in the UK. And even fewer that pay well.
- bowsamic 2y ago
  I think another big difference is that in the UK higher education is not really valued. In Germany people get PhDs because then they can get into much higher paying jobs, even if the PhD is not in a topic related much to the job. For example because I have a physics PhD I was able to get an entry level software dev position with a wage of 73k where someone with a bachelors may get only 40-50k. I don’t think that dynamic exists in the UK
- growse 2y ago
  The usefulness of that depends on whether you think academic higher education is vocational ("I'm doing a chemistry degree so that I can be a chemist") or inquisitive ("I'm doing a chemistry degree because it's so heckin' interesting"). I'd tend to advise people to study stuff they find interesting. I'd wager the percentage of degree holders doing a job that's directly related to their degree is in the minority, and that's not a bad thing.
  - spacebanana7 2y ago
    Inquisitive education is great for people who’re independently wealthy or academically exceptional. But the average person takes a real risk of underemployment with that approach. A friend of mine with a degree in marine biology works as a barista, another with a philosophy degree works as a retail assistant.
    - jmye 2y ago
      Those people don’t have those jobs because of their degree. As a non-wealthy, not particularly bright creative writing major, the focus of your degree only holds you back if you let it, or if you are utterly unwilling to work outside of your focus area. Tech, especially, has an absurd number of on-ramps for anyone willing to do the tiniest modicum of extra-curricular work.

graemep 2y ago

Most developed economies have shifted to services. Its a natural progression that results from higher productivity and higher wages. I think the big problem is too much reliance on on service sector.

asplake 2y ago
A natural progression and not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes further productivity growth more difficult.
EarlKing 2y ago
It's a consequence of companies outsourcing to countries where they can get away with slave labor and a complete lack of environmental regulation. There's nothing natural about it.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  It's basically a modern form of economic colonialism replacing the old style of colonialism with ships, guns and slaves in chains. The brutal hard work gets done off-shore for poor pay and the spoils(profits) get shipped to the western finance capitals of the world where people who put in little effort get the cream. It's still dependent on rich countries having historical leverage (economic, political and especially military) over the poor countries where the dirty manufacturing and hard labor happens, rather than based on any meritocracy.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Or how trade made places rich... Well you always have the buyer and seller. And less they get and more they pay worse is it for them... Trade has value generation, but also exploitation and extraction...
  - graemep 2y ago
    Not true. Those countries have become a lot richer. The transformation in standards of living since the 80s has been spectacular in many countries. The biggest drag on that has been the profits being taken by the wealthy in those countries. The west does not have he position it used to. There are a lot of British workers working for Indian capitalists. China's manufacturing is mostly Chinese owned. In a lot of other places the forreign ownership is Asian, not western. The west no longer dominates the world although westerners have been slow to bting themselves to acknowledge this.
- deltarholamda 2y ago
  Exactly this. Don't think of it as "moving to a service-based economy", think of it as "outsourcing manufacturing and resource extraction". They are two sides of the same coin, but people tend to only look at the one shiny side. Like any race to the bottom, it works great until you hit the bottom. Only now you don't have any of the fundamental industry, and you've lost all of the domain knowledge of those industries. Short-term thinking is incredibly seductive.
  - ANewFormation 2y ago
    It also creates this weird power imbalance. 'Advanced economies' are supposed to be just that, yet 'developing economies' cutting off their grain, steel and manufacturing is a far bigger threat than an advanced economy cutting off digital services, luxury goods, and financial markets.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      But "advanced" means "gone farther in a particular direction", not "more powerful", "independent", or some such. Mostly it's about giving the population more comfort. Equally, staying on a sofa can give you more comfort than hitting a gym, but it usually does not make you stronger.
- graemep 2y ago
  Its not that simple. The UK experts a lot of manufactured goods to exactly those sorts of countries, and imports a lot from the EU and the US. What you say is true of cheap consumer goods, but remember everything else. Even with some consumer goods, its pretty even - the UK exports cars about as much as it imports (by value, not numbers though). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers/uk-trade-in-numbers-web-version#import-statistics https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers... Its other big goods exports are things that are not that visible to consumers.
  - EarlKing 2y ago
    Are you sure you want to get into everything else? Because I could've sworn we just had a major controversy with Vivek Ramaswamy running his mouth about the supposed laziness of American workers to justify racial discrimination against them through mass hiring of H1B workers... a stance so obviously wrong it forced his exit from the Trump administration. He certainly wasn't referring to people employed producing "cheap consumer goods", and there's nothing natural about the shift to the use of H1B labor. Just to be clear, though: This phenomenon is not unique to the United States. Imperialists everywhere try to pit one people against another to maintain power and extract maximum value for minimum input. Just once I'd like the bourgeoisie-adjacent to acknowledge political reality.
    - graemep 2y ago
      We were talking about the UK. Since Brexit immigration policy has shifted to favouring highly skilled workers, especially skills in short supply, over cheap labour. There are definitely people here who think like that, and we do still import cheap labour for some things (difficult low paying jobs), that British people “will not do” ( which means ”will not do for minimum wage”) but in general we have had what the govt and central bank call “wage inflation”. We are also talking about the north of England and non-EU immigrants strongly prefer certain areas, tilted to the South. Where I live I see few non-white faces.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    We have been running a negative current account balance for decades now. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/hbop/pnbp https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpay...
- nine_k 2y ago
  OK, let it be not outsourcing to places with lower cost of labor, but to machines. There are whole factories that are operated by half-dozen people who mostly oversee its interaction with other human-run systems, such as trucks. It will still keep most population away from industrial production. Same thing happened is agriculture a century ago, when machines made 90% of agricultural workers redundant, and huge farms are run by half-dozen people. (Wait until AI will make a ton of service workers redundant.)
  - EarlKing 2y ago
    OK, sounds good... hey, you're going to pay taxes on those machines, right? Because no business operates in a vacuum. Gotta pay for that military, police, and fire that allow you to continue operating. Think of it as the labor element of the manufacturing sector shifting to the defense sector. It's natural. :D
    - vkou 2y ago
      Machines can't go on strike, and don't need to be ordered back to work at gunpoint. The part of the defense sector allocated to manufacturing was much bigger prior to automation.
PicassoCTs 2y ago
The problem is de-industrialization gets your society dependent on authoritarians who rent out there slaves to the lowest bidder and who then can wield you like a puppet. And the focusing on a more abstract economy- produces a inability to even perceive physical products, limitations and overall reality and the world. If everything is an abstraction, then problems like climate change, running out of energy or societal instability, surely can be doctored, narrated and abstracted away. And they cant. Which is a fundamental incompetence that is pretty obvious by now. One stuck in such a delusion, would imagine it optimal to blast furnace a mountain of money towards "elegant" formulas, unable to perceive, that those formulas at the end of the day have to produce fertilizer to feed a world of billions even when the crops fail.

Cumpiler69 2y ago

>More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking How does one get hired into banking with a physics degree? For what kinds of jobs? Where I live right now you only get into banking with a economics/business degree. Anything else and your resume goes in the bin.

jakey_bakey 2y ago
Stem degrees are pretty high rated
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  That's a vague answer that doesn't answer my specific question. I also have a STEM degree (electrical engineering) but would never be considered for finance roles.
  - gostsamo 2y ago
    data. stem people can do math and data analysis.
  - jwiz 2y ago
    Physics math has high overlap with Finance math.
  - growse 2y ago
    I have a chemistry degree and an entire career doing software / system engineering in financial services. I've also hired a boatload of people with STEM degrees. In fact (massive generalisation warning) I prefer hiring them to those with computer science degrees.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      How does one pivot into finance with a stem degree and computer engineering experience? What are you looking for in a resume and what's the interview process like?

JanisErdmanis 2y ago

> More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking This does not seem to be a specific phenomenon. Only a few of my former PhD condensed matter physics colleagues did not end up in finance.

spacebanana7 2y ago

> More than 2/3rds of my graduating physics class went straight into banking This is why I advise people to never study physical sciences or non-software engineering. There just aren’t many jobs for it in the UK. And even fewer that pay well.

bowsamic 2y ago
I think another big difference is that in the UK higher education is not really valued. In Germany people get PhDs because then they can get into much higher paying jobs, even if the PhD is not in a topic related much to the job. For example because I have a physics PhD I was able to get an entry level software dev position with a wage of 73k where someone with a bachelors may get only 40-50k. I don’t think that dynamic exists in the UK
growse 2y ago
The usefulness of that depends on whether you think academic higher education is vocational ("I'm doing a chemistry degree so that I can be a chemist") or inquisitive ("I'm doing a chemistry degree because it's so heckin' interesting"). I'd tend to advise people to study stuff they find interesting. I'd wager the percentage of degree holders doing a job that's directly related to their degree is in the minority, and that's not a bad thing.
- spacebanana7 2y ago
  Inquisitive education is great for people who’re independently wealthy or academically exceptional. But the average person takes a real risk of underemployment with that approach. A friend of mine with a degree in marine biology works as a barista, another with a philosophy degree works as a retail assistant.
  - jmye 2y ago
    Those people don’t have those jobs because of their degree. As a non-wealthy, not particularly bright creative writing major, the focus of your degree only holds you back if you let it, or if you are utterly unwilling to work outside of your focus area. Tech, especially, has an absurd number of on-ramps for anyone willing to do the tiniest modicum of extra-curricular work.