Acropolis Now

[Furunculus]

You can still do that and manufacture goods in Britain. Tesco for pure example is one of the top of the FTSE100 list, and they basically got all of their money in Britain. From the gamma's stocking selves, and economics of scale.

Also, by sending our IP all over the world, we become less and less relevant overtime, as afterall, some one needs to manufacture and use this IP and by doing that, we train them and expose them to our IP so they can take-over what we originally started.

While I am not advocating everything needs to be homegrown, but for the "West" to maintain its status, it needs to stop giving everything away, so those others nations end up superior than the west and as you put it, the west dies. I am pretty much arguing that what you are saying will not cause the results you want.

tescos is an excellent example of a company that achieves competitive advantage through innovation in service, fine with me.

it isn't being given away, it is being bought, and the profits reinvested back into the next generation of intellectual property, which other nations will also have to buy because they spent their money buying our IP rather than designing their own.

i'm not argueing against manufacturing in britain, merely pointing out that mass manufacture of low-tech goods like fridges and cheap cars is not something that will help us in the long-term.

Moving up to keep things as they are, evolution to get stagnation, it's right there.

You see, I read that as relative to the other nations, combined with part one, where we stagnate, we're actually trying to keep them down...somehow...

Then why aren't China etc. staying poor due to all the low-value goods they're producing?
It doesn't make sense to claim that countries producing low-value goods stay poor and then say China, which produces mostly low-value goods, is threatening us all economically.

maintaining our standard of living is hardly a good example of stagnation now is it.

free-trade floats all boats, but the higher the value of goods and services you provide the higher the value you retain in your own economy, a fact that preserves are comfortable living standards. quelle probleme?

because they start off from a position of poverty, and therefore low costs, whereas we exist with high-costs. it's not a difficult economic concept, really.

You don't think this is related?... London didn't rapidly exand as a financial center because of it's known to be a decent tourist city.

Now there's also the question were the remaining 95% of London workforce is supposed to find these high value jobs.
As Rory cynically mentioned, you'll need as high employment as possible for the society and financial system to work well. For those high value jobs, there's a simple question. Are there enough of them? And no "the market will create more jobs", unless you wish to explain how the industry will produce more jobs by producing more and reducing the number of employed. It's an inadequate explanation and will fall horribly if it's market efficient to have a smaller workforce.

Sure I can agree with adapt or die, the question is if that adaptation is a dead end fairly soon.

i really don't get what your saying there...........?

not everyone can or needs to have a high-value job, but it is also not difficult to realise that places like london and the south east generate a vast excess of tax revenue which pays for services in areas of the country that are a net-drain on resources, because they generate high-value services which bring in a high net revenue.

i don't believe it is.