NEETs and the future of the West

[Brazen]

You do seem to have sent us your drunks. I saw very little public over-drinking in Poland yet I quite often see Poles in work clothes drinking Żywiec at 10 in the morning, and a bunch of Polish builders out of their tree at 5pm sexually harassed me in the local shop so I had to call a friend to make sure I wasn't followed home.

[Neil]

That's what the service industry is for.

The service industry fills in a lot of the gaps but it can't cover everyone. I just can't see a place for the majority of the world's population in shuffling paper and passing around invisible money. The current economic mess put an end to the thinking that this could be feasible.

You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right?  The majority of the world's population is already in the service industry, doing things like working in restaurants, driving delivery vans, working for the government and so on.

[Tamas]

Actually, the level of service from the service industry has risen enormously here. The guys I hired (they did the flats of two of my coworkers earlier) do not come cheap but they seem very hard working and when I paid them a surprise visit on Thursday evening they all seemed sober. :p

so much for the p0rn movie scenario you hoped for?

[dps]

That's what the service industry is for.

The service industry fills in a lot of the gaps but it can't cover everyone. I just can't see a place for the majority of the world's population in shuffling paper and passing around invisible money. The current economic mess put an end to the thinking that this could be feasible.

You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right? 

Consider the source, and then ask yourself if you don't already know the answer.

[MadImmortalMan]

These days almost everything requires education and certificates.

That's how stupid people compete with smart ones. Build a framework where you can't just do something. You have to check all the right boxes first.

[Sheilbh]

I think a problem in the UK is that some areas are stuck with generations of this.  The FT did a really interesting series of articles about London's schools.  The state school system in London is now, by some distance, the best in the country and especially if you come from a poor background - and it's equalising, the Banlgadeshi community has seen a huge shift from relative underachievement to overachievement based on the social and economic stuff. 

There's loads of arguments for why it could've happened (investment helped) but some aspects are, I think, to do with London.  I think it's possible for any kid who takes an interest in something to follow that up in London and often relatively cheaply (all the museums are free so from dinosaurs and spaceships to mummies they can see anything) - which helps.  But two other things that I think help London don't exist in other parts of the country.

One is that London's a city with lots of immigrants who, unlike most British people, actually want to be in this country and come here out of some sort of hope.  There's a belief, not shared by most Brits, that you can actually build a relatively nice life here.  But there's also diversity which I think is a good in itself for kids and typical things like first generation immigrant pressure from parents to work hard.

Secondly I think London's very meritocratic and so kids can see that people can succeed and they can see the high end of the service sector.  So they can see the possibility of the city and the highly educated and the not so highly educated rich - and, of course, all of the people who are paid to look after them like courtiers in an ancien regime.  But, if you're in Huddersfield or Liverpool, I don't think there a similar sort of hope and 'service sector' is ultimately aspiring to manage a Victoria Wines or working in a care home which is, of course, state funded.

So I think the whole service sector model works-ish in London but I don't think you can easily replicate it in other parts of the country.  I think the optimism rings untrue in much of the rest of the country and if anything it's rather divisive.

I also don't necessarily buy the inevitable precipitous decline of manufacturing argument.  In the UK we've had a larger decline in total and as a share of the economy than any other OECD country, I think we sort of embraced it for political reasons (by both parties).  The problem is I don't know that we've necessarily done enough to make the transition work outside of a few pockets of success.  So I think in some areas of the UK we're probably on the second or maybe even third generation where this is a problem.

You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right? 

Yeah but there's also more than bankers who shuffle paper and move invisible money round.  Every PA and HR department, all of the support staff that goes into the finance sector and their supporting industries.

[Josquius]

Consider the source, and then ask yourself if you don't already know the answer.

Moron.

You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right?  The majority of the world's population is already in the service industry, doing things like working in restaurants, driving delivery vans, working for the government and so on.

Yet much of it still involves the same invisible money and not much actually being produced.
When you've a few countries with the majority of people in the service industry it can work. You've still got the rest of the world actually doing real work to exploit.
As more and more of the world develops though...I just can't see it being feasible for a world full of nothing but van drivers, waiters, web site designers etc... The supply of potential workers will always be greater than the demand.

[Martinus]

Consider the source, and then ask yourself if you don't already know the answer.

Moron.

You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right?  The majority of the world's population is already in the service industry, doing things like working in restaurants, driving delivery vans, working for the government and so on.

Yet much of it still involves the same invisible money and not much actually being produced.
When you've a few countries with the majority of people in the service industry it can work. You've still got the rest of the world actually doing real work to exploit.
As more and more of the world develops though...I just can't see it being feasible for a world full of nothing but van drivers, waiters, web site designers etc... The supply of potential workers will always be greater than the demand.

If you believe that transporting goods from the place A to the place B, for example, or IP creation (such as web design) is just "moving invisible money around" and does not actually create wealth, then you are a bigger idiot than you would have been if you just thought the service industry is composed solely of bankers.

[Tamas]

Consider the source, and then ask yourself if you don't already know the answer.

Moron.

You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right?  The majority of the world's population is already in the service industry, doing things like working in restaurants, driving delivery vans, working for the government and so on.

Yet much of it still involves the same invisible money and not much actually being produced.
When you've a few countries with the majority of people in the service industry it can work. You've still got the rest of the world actually doing real work to exploit.
As more and more of the world develops though...I just can't see it being feasible for a world full of nothing but van drivers, waiters, web site designers etc... The supply of potential workers will always be greater than the demand.

If you believe that transporting goods from the place A to the place B, for example, or IP creation (such as web design) is just "moving invisible money around" and does not actually create wealth, then you are a bigger idiot than you would have been if you just thought the service industry is composed solely of bankers.

His point, I think, is that service industry by it's nature is relying on the production sector. Like it or not, you can have a (not too well) functioning economy without maids, personal trainers, couriers and marketing firms, but you can't have it without farmers, miners, industrial workers.
A lot of those have been covered by the third world for us 1st worlders. That is perfectly fine for me by the way, assuming that we can keep globalization running.

[Martinus]

But his way of thinking is very 19th century.

In this day and age, production of goods is so automated and efficient, that goods (including agricultural products) needed to meet the global demand can be manufactured by a small percentage of the global workforce. This means that, unless you are introducing completely new type of products (that does not at the same time make another type of products obsolete), there is really no point in creating more production jobs.

This kind of mechanics does not apply to the same degree to various creative and/or service jobs, where an individual human "touch" is much more important - so the number of these jobs will grow compared to production jobs that will stagnate or dwindle.

[Tamas]

But his way of thinking is very 19th century.

In this day and age, production of goods is so automated and efficient, that goods (including agricultural products) needed to meet the global demand can be manufactured by a small percentage of the global workforce. This means that, unless you are introducing completely new type of products (that does not at the same time make another type of products obsolete), there is really no point in creating more production jobs.

This kind of mechanics does not apply to the same degree to various creative and/or service jobs, where an individual human "touch" is much more important - so the number of these jobs will grow compared to production jobs that will stagnate or dwindle.

I agree with you, but let's not forget that for our present service-oriented society to work, countless millions toil away in very 19th century-like jobs in the third world.