the decline of UK manufacturing

cells

I think the problem is people think that the UK is losing manufacturing jobs and wealth to other nations but the reality is manufacturing as a portion of the worlds economy is shrinking (as farming before it did) while manufactured goods are increasing.

I used to work at a steel plant which had 30,000 workers at its peak. Its now down to under 3,000 workers. However the production of steel actually went up from 1 million tons a year to 3 million tons a year. So yes manufacturing has and is declining especially in the number it employs but production generally isnt

Also I find it interesting to note that a lot of the manufacturing powerhouses of Germany or Japan or USA or even England is contributed from ...... ready meals.....(or proceed foods in general). So it is not all about high tech parts for spaceships and mobile phones a lot of it is your frozen tika masala and digestive biscuits.

cells

Generali wrote: »

In Shanghai, the place closest to having a standard of living most posters would find reasonable in China, the median household income is £5,500 or thereabouts. In the UK it is, what, about £27,500?

No its much closer now Gen,

World bank data 2014

China = ~$13.2k gdp ppp. Beijing/Shanghai closer to $28k gdp ppp
UK = ~$39.7k gdp ppp

Also, presumably, without checking the data. Its highly likely that the average household in Beijing/Shanghai has more people and hence wage earners in it so the household gap is probably even smaller


EDIT: I think maybe you mean nominal gdp rather than my assumption of ppp but of course ppp is what matters more than nominal. Nominal is of course a much bigger gap something like $8k china $16k Shanghai $40k uk