I'm talking mainly about the amount of people, not just traders, etc. , employed by Finance firms from the 80s until now, and how those numbers are getting lower and lower. And if those job numbers are not being created in other industries, then where are these people going to work?
I'm sure you've seen articles about college students being advised to reconsider careers in Finance as it's no longer the Holy Grail of job opportunities it was only a few years back.
As far as investing, at least in the States, the kinds of average people who gambled in the stock market pre- and even post- dot.com boom are now few and far between. And with the frightening and persistent unemployment rate there, people barely have money for food and shelter, that very significant segment of the once-investing public certainly is not investing. I'm sure the rich continue to invest.
So I'm sure you're correct in that there are fewer, richer people benefiting whereas not long ago more people had a better quality of life, jobs, less fear of unemployment, and 'disposable' income with which to invest.
JR8 wrote:Brah wrote:I think you know that's not what I meant.
One thing's for sure, a lot less people are investing a lot less, and a lot less people have money to invest.
No honestly, I don't know what you are trying to say. And I don't understand your comment above. I see stock-markets at record highs, ditto
property markets. That suggests to me that people have record sums of money to invest. What indicators are you using to gauge # of investors and their available funds?
Brah wrote:
Maybe the next generation will enable a new industry that does more than play with OPM, and actually contribute to the human race.
It sounds rather like you'd welcome the return of the Khmer Rouge, you know, everyone out of their Raffles Place offices and engaged in the noble
labour of tilling the soil on the Padang instead.
More seriously though which industries 'actually contribute to the human race', where finance, apparently in your eyes, does not?
Nice one. But not quite that drastic of course. Finance, Wall Street anyway, is largely about money, whereas lives are saved in hospitals, inventions are created in tech companies, music and art are created by artists, scientists create cures for diseases, etc.
It's surely an arguable point, and has been debated to death on forums and sites like HuffPo by those who feel quite strongly about it, and while I may not be one of them, and while some of them are misguided into thinking dogmatically that money=greed=bad etc. you're more likely to find more reasons where over the past decade the Finance industry has screwed up people, homes, families, states, countries, etc. than the contrary.
I think zzm9980's said rant was a more eloquent explanation than mine.
I just read Callput's post that followed mine, he's totally right and I think we're all on the same page here. Will make for an interesting Eagles night.
