My first job was for a major footwear manufacturer. At the time - over 30 years ago, just about everyone in the town worked the one major company. Now 30 years later, there is a warehouse (large one) full of shoes made in on the other side of the world and a shopping centre and lots of new houses.
OK - we are all still here and I guess all working. But where?
Is everyone commuting (look at all those emissions) to work in the expanded financial heart of the main regional city (in all those shaky banks)? Or driving to other towns? The railways closed down years ago - this is a rural area with no mass transit.
It is becoming a little obvious that the financial bubble burst because, what was in effect a sophisticated version of pyramid selling of money packages, collapsed.
Is this pyramid going across the whole economy - we know that you need fewer people to make, say cars, because of improvements in technology etc - that's fine as long as we are still making the vehicles (and in general, we still are) - services will spring up to support the new applied technologies - or to take advantage of greater wealth because of higher productivity
All good - so far.
What happens where a business moves its manufacturing abroad?
More to come...
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