Britain and the EU

CLAPTON

BobQ wrote: »

There is absolutely no need to be abusive. If you believe that people are not entitled to their opinions maybe you should consider a change of country.

Quoting what someone else says out of context does not help your argument.

The whole world is not attempting to break in to the UK (except in your little Englander imagination). The decline of manufacturing in the UK and the growth of service industries has had a negative affect on the UK whoever you care to blame. Germany has faced lots of challenges from automation too but has preserved its manufacturing industry. Where is ours? France has invested in low cost nuclear power while we have just destroyed our domestic energy capacity, driving the prices up, importing energy and destroying our steel industry in the process.

Poverty is a relative term and I was responding to Leveller's point that immigration and poverty are linked and part of the EU membership question. You seem to agree. But you seem very confused and have no solution apart from stopping immigration. The problem is not the immigrant workforce it is the lack of jobs that pay decent wages.

the UK has less than 1% of the worlds population
what share of the world's manufacturing do you think we should have?

mayonnaise

CLAPTON wrote: »

the UK has about 8% of the worlds population

Now I've heard it all.

CLAPTON

mayonnaise wrote: »

Now I've heard it all.

thank you

I have edited my post accordingly

BobQ

CLAPTON wrote: »

the UK has less than 1% of the worlds population
what share of the world's manufacturing do you think we should have?

I think we should be able to produce enough energy without importing it.

As much as France or Italy would be a start.

Generali

vivatifosi wrote: »

I've been thinking a lot about the £900 thing and what the answer is. It isn't an unreasonable price for B2B research, but what about getting info to the public? It isn't about obtaining an information advantage in this case, rather ensuring that people have the best information available to make their individual decision.

I think that there could be a real market for a body like the Economist or FT to write special editions, with quality research, that the public could then buy at whatever would be a reasonable price point, maybe £5 a copy. The difficulty would be to seem impartial. But I would feel much happier being able to make a decision on my vote aimed with something like that. The unit cost for the research to the end customer is much lower, but obviously the multiples sold would be much higher.

The Economist and FT already effectively do that via their 'freemium' subscription model and their use of special reports (The Economist) and linked series of articles (FT).

As for something a bit meatier, perhaps there is an untapped market out there. One could get masters and PhD students to write articles in return for a share of the profits. If you are already an expert on a topic you could probably bang out 10,000 words with some original research or analysis in a month or so in your spare time. If you could flog 1,000 copies at a fiver a time with a 50/50 split on the money then you'd make £500 each which isn't bad. Beats working in a pub or something.

Generali

BobQ wrote: »

I think we should be able to produce enough energy without importing it.

As much as France or Italy would be a start.

The UK already produces roughly the same quantity of manufactured goods as France and Italy with each product producing ~3% of world manufactured output.

Of course that is only part of the picture as the UK is excellent at exporting services, in fact the second largest in the world. Of course that doesn't satisfy the manufacturing fetishists but an export is an export whether it's a car or an advert.

BobQ

Generali wrote: »

The UK already produces roughly the same quantity of manufactured goods as France and Italy with each product producing ~3% of world manufactured output.

Of course that is only part of the picture as the UK is excellent at exporting services, in fact the second largest in the world. Of course that doesn't satisfy the manufacturing fetishists but an export is an export whether it's a car or an advert.

When I last saw any data France and Italy were ahead of UK but this may have changed. But you no doubt follow these things more than I do.

Manufacturing is a symbol. The issue is the type of jobs we have and the rewards that go with them. If you have a large part of the nation employed on minimum wage or close to it, with limited opportunities to develop careers, it is very divisive. We are heading back to an era when ordinary people lack opportunities and live from hand to mouth while a small number reap the rewards.

Mistermeaner

You mean like during the hay day of British manufacturing?

Generali

BobQ wrote: »

When I last saw any data France and Italy were ahead of UK but this may have changed. But you no doubt follow these things more than I do.

Manufacturing is a symbol. The issue is the type of jobs we have and the rewards that go with them. If you have a large part of the nation employed on minimum wage or close to it, with limited opportunities to develop careers, it is very divisive. We are heading back to an era when ordinary people lack opportunities and live from hand to mouth while a small number reap the rewards.

France and Italy probably make a little bit more than the UK but broadly the same amount. The data I saw showed 10% more in 2013. As the pound has gone up by about 15-20% against the Euro since then, the UK probably makes slightly more than France and Italy. The figures will bounce around with FX volatility so it's probably more accurate to say that the countries manufacture broadly the same amount of physical stuff with the UK exporting vastly more services than either country.

The strength in services probably comes from professional services (accounting and law), finance (investment banking boo hiss) and advertising and media (the Premier League alone is likely to be worth over US$4bn/year from next year in TV rights and by contrast Man Utd make ~£1.5mn from replica shirt sales, i.e. 'stuff').

I don't know why people are so down on the sale of services rather than manufacturing. There is far more money in services and they are less dirty and dangerous. Put it this way, would you rather live next door to a chemical plant or Goldman Sachs?

The reality IME is that you are much more likely to be on the minimum wage if you work on a production line than if you have a junior job in an advertising office.

Generali

For anyone that is interested, if you go to the ASHE data, collated by the ONS:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-337425

you can see that people working in manufacturing earn an average of £12.74/hour which is a little bit less than the UK average wage of £13.08/hour.

The big bucks are in Finance & Insurance (£19.39/hr), Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (£17.61/hr) and Information and Communication (£17.58/hr), mostly service sector jobs. The lowest paid sectors are accommodation and food service activities (£7.62/hr) and agriculture, forestry and fishing (£8.83/hr).

What do we learn from that? If you want to be rich, be a banker. Duh.

Interestingly, and probably counter-intuitively, bankers have seen their wages more than any other sector over the last 7 years with wages rising by 7% since 2008. My expectation is that those in catering and agriculture will be the big gainers from the living wage policy in terms of pounds coming in in wages. After all, just to get the minimum wage on average, people in catering would need to see wages rise by 18% and there will be plenty of managers, senior chefs etc. that will make plenty more than the minimum wage. (numbers all come from SOC07).