Ein äusserst interessantes Referat, wem wir unseren Wohlstand zu verdanken haben. Tipp: Es sind weder die von mir bereits gestern gescholtenen Finanz-Jongleure (Stichwort Excel und hohe Boni), noch Versicherungsmakler – sondern Handwerker!

Of the world’s ten largest corporations by revenue, nine make big, heavy things. Like cars or ships‘ turbines or computer hardware or consumer electronics.

[…] Only one – WalMart – is a service company.

Look at the most profitable companies and again the facts speak for themselves. In the top ten, only three are service companies.

And as for the world’s least profitable company? Why it’s Vodafone, a service company that made a loss of more than 15 billion dollars last year.

Manufacturing creates the wealth and spending power that feed the service industry.

Quelle: The Richard Dimbleby Lecture – Engineering the Difference by James Dyson

Der Untergang Grossbritanniens wurde nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg eingeläutet, sagt James Dyson. Damals nämlich, als plötzlich nicht mehr der Mechaniker hoch im Kurs stand, sondern der Buchhalterberuf:

We were encouraged to get a job that promised a safe future – accountancy, law, medicine, the foreign office or some other part of the civil service.

[…] As a result, we now produce only 3,000 physics graduates a year. Compare that to an astonishing 15,000 psychologists!