What caught my eye this week.
You can passionately make the case for financial independence being hugely positive versus retiring early being a bit of wild goose chase – and I have. But if some unfortunate office drone has just been sent to the seldom-visited filing cabinets in the strange rooms behind security to spend a week hunting for all the paper-based invoices from O’Brien and Sons from the 1970s, well, good luck getting them to vote for the job.
Of course many jobs are rubbish. But from the earliest days of this blog I’ve argued they used to be even worse. All repetitive manual paperwork and calling Mr Blimp ‘Sir’ as he dressed you down for wearing the wrong kind of tie again.
Not to mention the love of coal mining and sweating in an iron foundry that middle-aged middle-class columnists love to champion – but would be dead doing themselves in a fortnight.
Somebody’s got to do it
There’s a big difference between a job being unsatisfying and the actual work being pointless or futile.
Yet a decent chunk of the Retire Early and Forever cohort of the FIRE scene1 believe that modern jobs are literally pointless – even to the organisation they’re working for.
They cite arcane tasks steeped in ritual but bereft of meaning, such as preparing a presentation for a senior manager that they suspect will never be read. And to be fair most of us can agree with them about all those pointless meetings.
Overall though, I believe most of these jobs have a function – at least in the private sector.
Sure there might be a bit of padded headcount here or some not-yet-optimised away employees there.
But even badly-run companies won’t survive for long carrying too much deadweight that’s doing nothing to keep the operation going.
Strike through
I saw this when I was managing my own small start-up. There were never enough hands for all the work to be done – much of it indeed annoying or trivial-seeming.
Some of those hired hands were a bit useless, I reluctantly concede. But not what we had them doing.
At least not from the myopic perspective of our company. Which is to say: nobody was curing cancer.
That is clearly a big issue for a lot of people. If pushed, they can see their work has a function. But they don’t see the point for humanity, I suppose.
The other issue is the typical cog doesn’t have a good view of the machine. Your useless role writing up user manuals that you believe nobody reads might be a lifesaver one day when your company’s minor malfunctioning gadget brings a giant operation to a halt. Not to mention it’s hard to sell stuff without operating instructions, even if most people ignore them. So they’re a function of sales and marketing.
Or just ask whoever presumably has done something wrong at Crowdstrike. I don’t know what exactly crippled half the world IT system’s following its software update yesterday. But I’ll bet it’s a trivial-seeming thing gone wrong.
Not some exciting security function that was dreamed up by the company’s brain trust and lovingly laboured-on like Michelangelo working over a ceiling. Rather, the version control or installation code or similar.
Boring stuff that gets no acclaim, and that nobody rushes out of university to get started on.
But which is quietly absolutely essential.
It’s a wonderful life
For more on all this, you can click over to Byrne Hobart’s devotional paean to the complexity of modern workplaces on Capital Gains this week.
In taking down a Bible of the Modern Work is Rubbish movement – the late David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs – Hobart writes:
Graeber estimates that roughly half of all work fits his fake job categorization, which implies that the economy’s productive capacity is roughly twice the output we actually get. It would be a pretty big deal if this were true: we could have a lot more leisure, and a lot more stuff.
And there are people motivated to make this happen! The strongest single argument against Graeber’s book is: did anyone at Bain or McKinsey read it? What about KKR and Blackstone?
Did any owner of any business of any size read it and say: “What a sec! That’s right! Most jobs really are fake jobs designed to make rich people feel good about themselves. But what makes me feel good about myself is having more money, so I’m going to start firing people and keeping the money.”
The closest you can get is Elon Musk at Twitter, which did reveal that the service could keep running, and ship new features, with a lower headcount. But that happened at a company that was notoriously inefficient, for years, and one where it’s widely-agreed that they unnecessarily blew their lead in short-form many-to-many communications, and took too long to get into messaging.
If there’s one large-scale example of the thesis playing out, and the thesis holds that it’s describing a ubiquitous phenomenon, something doesn’t add up.
Hobart rightly concedes that many jobs aren’t fun to do and also that many people are in the wrong jobs for them, personally.
But as he concludes:
The world is full of mysterious economic phenomena. You should expect it to be!
A world where you can consider a random career or business for a few seconds and instantly identify a way to double its efficiency is a much weirder world than one where those mysteries tend to have satisfying answers.
It’s also a world whose sizable and growing aggregate wealth is a big mystery: if we’re wasting more and more of our time, shouldn’t we be getting poorer?
Go give it a read and see what you think.
Honestly, with all the dire warnings about the typical worker’s imminent replaceability by an AI drone, it’d be nice to think we were just giving each other things to do out of habit, ego, stupidity, or an obliviousness to the bottom line.
In an AI-powered world we could then continue to pay ourselves to – metaphorically – dig holes on a Monday only fill them up again by Friday.
But real-world capitalism is far too ruthless for that.
Have a great weekend.
From Monevator
The All-Weather portfolio – Monevator
How people invest their pensions and other assets – Monevator
From the archive-ator: Nine underrated tools to help you achieve financial independence – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view click through to read the article. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing to sites you visit a lot.
UK inflation holds steady at 2%, holding just above expectations – CNBC
Nearly 1.1m people immigrated to England and Wales in the year to mid-2023 – ONS
London leads surprise rebound in house prices – This Is Money
New law aims to prevent repeat of Truss mini-budget – BBC
Nationwide’s £2.9bn takeover of Virgin Money cleared by watchdog – This Is Money
More than half-a-million people now caught in 60% tax ‘trap’ – The Accountant
King’s Speech summary: Labour’s key agenda points… – BBC
…with a claim the pension shake-up could add £11,000 to average pots – Guardian
Money can buy happiness, suggests new study – Guardian
![](https://i0.wp.com/monevator.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/shipping-costs-july-2024.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1)
Supply chain stresses are coming back – Axios
Products and services
Monzo launches a free card for under-16s – Monzo
First-time buyers handed 95% mortgage boost – Which
Should buy-to-let landlords fix now or risk a tracker? – This Is Money
Open an account with low-cost platform InvestEngine via our link and get up to £50 when you invest at least £100 (T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – InvestEngine
Keyless tech is contributing to a wave in car thefts… – Which
…what else is driving the car insurance crisis? [Search result] – FT
Pret to end ‘free’ coffee subscription – Be Clever With You Cash
Eco homes near the sea for sale, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
A balanced portfolio always comes with regrets – A Wealth of Common Sense
When does it make sense to own a non-standard investment? – Humble Dollar
Is a ‘total bond’ fund still a good choice? [US but relevant] – Oblivious Investor
Rebalancing sometimes produces higher returns. Not always – Morningstar
Don’t take the last dollar – Of Dollars and Data
Wage dysmorphia – Guardian
When the game changes, invent a whole new one – Abnormal Returns
The cost of war – Klement on Investing
Three bad economic narratives that are dead but will persist – Cullen Roche
Commodities for the long run [Nerdy] – CFA Institute
The UBS Global Wealth Report [PDF] – UBS
Risk and luck mini-special
The risks we miss – Humble Dollar
All the luck we cannot see – The Uncertainty of It All
Is risk always bad news? – Simple Living in Somerset
Naughty corner: Active antics
![](https://i0.wp.com/monevator.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/low-volatility-US-stocks-2024.jpg?resize=1000%2C971&ssl=1)
The last time the S&P 500 dropped more than 2% was 512 days ago – Sherwood
Most investors don’t believe in efficient markets – Verdad
The increasing complexity of the ETF universe [Search result] – FT
Record speed-run into small caps leaves US stock market searching for catalysts – Sherwood
Asset manager profit margins are getting thinner – Institutional Investor
How to make and lose millions in the crypto economy and not lose your mind – Sherwood
Private equity’s dry powder mountain reaches record height – Institutional Investor
Kindle book bargains
The Hidden Half by Michael Blastland – £0.99 on Kindle
How to Own the World by Andrew Craig – £0.99 on Kindle
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss – £0.99 on Kindle
Bejiing Rules: China’s Quest for Global Influence by Bethany Allen – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Modelling the economic consequences of climate change – Klement on Investing
Lost area of Welsh rainforest to be returned to ancient glory – Guardian
Bliss cycling along the wild coast of Estonia – Guardian
Robot overlord roundup
Goldman throws cold water on AI mania – Institutional Investor
Can AI make work meetings more bearable? – BBC
Samsung’s new image-generating AI tool is a little too good – The Verge
Assassination aftermath mini-special
The Trump assassination attempt is a window into America’s fractured reality – Vox
This is the Great Ravine – Epsilon Theory
Off our beat
Push the fence – Raptitude
Was Gareth Southgate great, or just lucky? – FT
Where to build a brand new town in Britain – UK Day One
Why skilled immigration is a national security priority for the US – Noahpinion
The knotty death of the necktie – The New Yorker
Underground cave found on moon could be ideal base for explorers – Guardian
It’s time to stop arguing over the population slowdown and to start adapting – Vox
Why is 80% of Mexico nearly empty? – Uncharted Territories
And finally…
“Wealth is the absence of economic anxiety.”
– Scott Galloway, The Algebra of Wealth
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- Financial Independence Retire Early. [↩]
> I don’t know what exactly crippled half the world IT system’s following its software update yesterday. But I’ll bet it’s a trivial-seeming thing gone wrong.
There were layers of incompetence on display yesterday.
Microsoft for allowing 3rd parties to install kernel extensions, Apple moved away from this years ago.
Microsoft for allowing kernel extensions to continue to run after they repeatedly fail.
Crowdstrike for rolling out an update en-masse.
Crowdstrike for rolling out a corrupted update (apparently the file was filled with nulls).
Crowdstrike for writing a kernel extension that crashes when its virus definitions are corrupt.
That’s before you get to corporates who install this stuff in order to tick a box on some compliance form or the IT industry being so wedded to obsolete and unsafe languages.
>Boring stuff that gets no acclaim, and that nobody rushes out of university to get started on.
>But which is quietly absolutely essential.
This stuff mostly doesn’t get done. New features are always a priority.
David Graeber was essentially a prophet, and BSJ is one of the most perceptive books written in the last 50 years – nothing explains the modern economy better
Thanks for the links @TI.
Sabine Hossenfelder thinks AI won’t take the jobs until we get human level flexible robots and that that’s not happening anything soon.
Interesting to see that the CFA paper on commodities allocation gives such low percentages for high equity allocations. I recall @TA’s research concluded a 40/60 stock/commodities outperforms 100 stocks from 1934-2023. Any thoughts?
The best arguments are the irrefutable ones. From the above links, quoting “Why Concentrated Stock Positions are a Loser’s Game”: “In addition, almost 60% of stocks reduced shareholder wealth…. just 4% of stocks produced all of the market’s excess return over Treasury bills….the 86 top-performing stocks, less than one-third of 1% of the total, collectively accounted for more than half the wealth creation…..” There’s no-one, realistically, who can consistently and repeatedly find that one-third of one percent.
Typo “anytime” not “anything”. The SH YT video post in question is this week’s.
The UK millionaires decline is quite an outlier. Lots are coming to the UK (we had 1m immigrants in 2023) but the economists predict loads are going to leave (500k who have money). Seems odd to me that the UK is seen as such a basket case for the next 3 years. I guess we will see. Loved the Southgate article, data is such a wonderful thing to see what is really going on.
Great set of links again this week.
Liked the “Risk and luck mini-special” – but I guess I would say that.
Thanks
I’m not so sure Graeber is wrong, that there is unnecessary work going on, but that it is not cleanly segmented into definitely required jobs and bullshit jobs. There’s a bit of bullshit in every job. Do you do 5 days of work per week because there is precisely 5 days of work to be done or because your employment contract says so? If we all took half a day extra a week off, do you think productivity would actually decline or would the bullshit just get squeezed out?
There’s a real poignancy and purpose to Jonathan Clement’s writing. Very sad.
Hobart is entirely right. I have seen a few companies, very large and small-ish. Salaries are the biggest cost factor. There is always pressure to increase efficiency. The usual problem is too much work for too few people. Most of the tasks are necessary or useful to the organisation (otherwise they are eliminated), whether or not an anthropologist understands them. Sure, bigger organisations incur some frictions, and need jobs to manage that friction; but they gain economies of scale and thus stay competitive.
Re FIRE, this is really a strawman debate. The point is that most jobs are, at the end of the day, personally unsatisfactory and devoid of meaning. And modern work tends to take over most of our lives. Consumption does not provide lasting satisfaction. Is our sole purpose to be some cog in a big machine, or to live for the benefit of “the economy”?
Re: the whole Crowdstrike debacle: MSFT fall into the 1st of John Tuld’s 3 categories in Margin Call: “There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat”.
Objectively Microsoft products have never been good (although Teams is getting there TBF). And some of their products have been downright bad (remember Windows Vista). But they’ve leveraged their first mover advantage to the max.
In a genuine free market situation they’d been out competed many years ago and eventually gone the way of Eastman Kodak Company and Polaroid Corporation.
In that alternative universe, the Crowdstike catastrophy wouldn’t have happened as businesses like Apple, who would probably have supplanted Microsoft, would have done things very differently.
have things really improved..
Petronius
“We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”
“But even badly-run companies won’t survive for long carrying too much deadweight that’s doing nothing to keep the operation going.”
I guess you’ve never worked in a multi-vendor IT environment where each vendor specs out project for a client and over-egg what’s required, resulting in lots of people with little to do.
The vendor is happy, bums on seats means they’re paid. In theory, it means the client should wise up and change vendors. In practice, inertia, long term contracts, lack of visiblity and lack of alternatives mean that this still happens a lot.
BS job are just a manifestation of a complex society. In world of significant surpluses, where people don’t need to spend all day digging in the soil just to find something to eat, we have the luxury to create a diverse range of jobs. It’s give us all something to do. Many of those jobs seem pointless but actually are not. A few are actually pointless. That frictional cost is a price we pay to maintain that complexity.
Post a nuclear apocalypse, there will be no requirement for BS jobs since it will be a far simpler society. No need for lawyers, management consultants, accountants, DE&I advisers, traders, HR etc. So every time I am sitting there wondering what the f**k HR does all day (or just what the f**k I do all day), I have to remind myself that a world that didn’t need these functions might not be such a nice place to live.
Only credible explanation for state of the world, BS jobs and all, is that we’re descended from Golgafrincham Ark #1 (per Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy):
😉
https://youtu.be/fMoPR2IA2Uk?si=GEhHU7EBiq_xy42V
65% tax trap in Scotland, not including NI.
@zxspectrum48k Love the idea that the Telephone Sanitisers, Management Consultants and Marketing Executives are a barometer of significant surpluses, perhaps to be celebrated rather than packed into a ‘B’ Ark and blasted off into space after the Golgafrinchams.
Just spotted a new Bessembinder paper on SSRN (pre-print draft 16 Jul 24): “Which U.S. Stocks Generated the Highest Long-Term Returns?” – covering 29,078 stocks across the 98 years Dec 31, 1925 to Dec 31, 2023. Per abstract: “The majority (51.6%) of these stocks had negative cumulative returns. However, the investment performance of some stocks was remarkable. 17 stocks delivered cumulative returns greater than 5 mn% (or $50,000 per dollar initially invested), with the highest cumulative return of 265 mn% (or $2.65 mn per dollar initially invested) accruing to long-term investors in Altria Group [Philip Morris]. Annualized compound returns to these top performers relatively were modest, averaging 13.47% across the top 17 stocks, thereby affirming the importance of “time in the market.” The highest annualized compound return for any stock with at least 20 years of return data was 33.38%, earned by Nvidia shareholders.”
´Overall though most of these jobs have a function -at least in the private sector’
I’d probably be on the B ark if I was a Golgafrincham but since swapping a trainee management role in financial services for a job in the public sector 25 years ago I’m not convinced there are many jobs without a function there either; certainly not in my area of further education anyway
@2moreyears. Was thinking of Adam’s Golgafrinchans on Ark Fleet Ship B. The remaining Golgafrinchans on planet Golgafrincham went extinct from a pandemic caused by dirty telephone receivers. Don’t diss those Telephone Sanitizers!
@Pinkney, if our millionaires are net migrating out of the UK and those migrating in are either on benefits, students bringing dependent families with them (I can’t recall having my own family with me when at Uni), or at best semi-skilled on median salaries then you can see why the economy will be a basket case.
So the tax burden for the middle classes is going to have to continue to rise to balance the books.
I rarely get political in the comment section here, but it is my turn to be Barry Blimp this week. We can argue about whether high skilled migration from the EU was beneficial (it was imo, if unsustainable long term due to EU wide demographic decline) but the current plan is a disaster unless we magic up millions of new, highly skilled highly paid jobs that bring in more tax than the migrant dependents will ultimately consume over their lifetime.
@SemiPassive (#20)
There are some interesting recent data at
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-labour-market-an-overview/
which is well worth a read through. I won’t repeat all of the key points, except that 21% of the workforce is currently non-UK born so replacing them or removing the jobs would need a long term plan.
As for students, in my experience (I worked in Engineering in a UK university) many international students (particularly at Masters level) were mature students (because they had secured funding either by saving up or through their own government, so needed the requisite experience) and often had both spouse and children. I also note that students (in common with other migrants) pay an NHS surcharge on their visa (£776 per year per person for students) and are not automatically or necessarily entitled to benefits (no recourse to public funds).
@SemiPassive My time to be BarryBlimp too, but curiously from the opposite direction
> We can argue about whether high skilled migration from the EU was beneficial (it was imo, if unsustainable long term due to EU wide demographic decline) but the current plan is a disaster unless we magic up millions of new, highly skilled highly paid jobs
The problem with migration from the EU, and IMO it was a problem, was that a lot of it was low to medium skilled, and impaired opportunities for Brits to do those jobs. Free movement means that the UK couldn’t discriminate against this. I have no love at all for the last incarnation of the Tory party, but one of the few benefits of Brexit (among the too many to count maluses) was that the UK can discriminate what sort of migration and what sort of skills it wanted. They said that they were targeting this towards higher skills, whether that was what happened I don’t know, but it should reduce the benefistas and raise that middle class tax base, which is where the numbers are. In principle higher-skilled EU workers could still apply – the list of eligible/non-eligible jobs is here and salaries seem to start at the ~30k p.a for new hires. I could wish that we train more people in skilled manual jobs like painters, plasterers, carpet fitters and butchers and bakers rather than importing. That could save more of our young folk from the yoke of university fees and is probably not so susceptible to AI. But it seems a reasonable starter.
@ermine, Semi Passive, Alan S: isn’t the issue ‘why come to the UK if you’re a high earning/wealthy foreign worker?’
We don’t have a USP anymore.
We’re not a gateway to Europe.
We’re becoming ever less of a finance hub; as Amsterdam, Zurich, Singapore etc all power ahead.
We’re not a tech hub like the US or a tech/ manufacturing one like Germany, Taiwan, Korea and Japan.
We don’t have a great tax regime for foreign high earners.
We don’t have good social infrastructure anymore (NHS, roads, rail).
Our schools and Unis are no longer world class.
It’s almost too depressing to think about tbh 🙁
@Delta Hedge #23
First place and three in the top ten https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2024/world-ranking
@Factor #24 true but what about the proliferation of ‘non-degrees’ (a media studies generation).
The median quality can’t be the same with 30% or so of the 18-21 cohort going to uni as compared to 5% upto the 1960s. Frontier of achievement may have advanced, but not the typical experience.
Check out here KCL’s Nov 2023 paper “UK universities: from a Triangle of Sadness to a Brighter Future”:
– From the intro: “UK universities are caught in a “Triangle of Sadness” between aspiring but anxious students burdened with debt; a stretched government ambivalent about the public good of universities; and beleaguered university staff who feel caught in the middle”.
– Decreasing funding per student: Since 2012, fees capped at £9,250, leading to a reduction (to £6,000 in 2012 prices) in real-terms funding due to inflation.
Also, according to the IFS “Annual report on education spending in England: 2023” – “Up-front spending on teaching resources per higher education student has continued to decline steadily, standing at £9,600 per year for the 2023–24 university entry cohort. This is around £2,100 or 18% lower in real terms than in 2012–13, largely because the cap on tuition fees is now 24% lower in real terms than it was in 2012–13. Teaching
resources are now only slightly higher in real terms than they were in 2011–12 (£9,400) before the substantial increase in tuition fee”.
Other sources confirm this giving funding per student in 2012-13 was £11,800 in today’s prices with total funding per student in 2023-24 was £9,600.
This will keep on falling as the level of tuition fees has been frozen.
And as KCL’s paper notes, the relative research standing of UK universities has stalled. The UK’s share of global academic paper production has decreased from 7% in 2012 to 6% currently.
@Delta Hedge — You write:
Um, Imperial College in London just rose to number two in the world rankings:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/253793/imperial-ranks-second-world-major-university/
Agree with most of the rest of your list 🙂 Though that’s a comparison between elite countries in the grand scheme of things. Compared to 75% of the world we’re still a relative Nirvana, and I think we do still have an edge for ease of business formation and scaling, albeit the latter is Brexit-imparied.
Also our reliance on international students to maintain funding levels makes the education of UK students vulnerable to geopolitical shifts and immigration concerns
@TI #26
Apologies for a “blue-on-blue” but I opted for the THE rankings because the QS methodology is “criticised for its overreliance on subjective indicators and reputation surveys, which tend to fluctuate over time and form a feedback loop. Concerns also exist regarding the global consistency and integrity of the data used to generate the QS rankings.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QS_World_University_Rankings
I agree with others that UK universities still have to be counted “world class”, though their funding issues means this status is very fragile. Obviously the comparison is of the high performing tails of the bell-shaped curves because that is what appears in league tables; while it is interesting to speculate about the median quality that isn’t something there is data on – but the median quality in the US is probably not higher.
@Delta Hedge’s snide comment about “non-degrees” isn’t helpful. It has long been the case that the high level analytic skills learned by studying things like English, history or philosophy have turned out to provide a basis for productive careers in business and government service, and I suspect media studies does the same (it has similarities to English except the material extends beyond written literature). Like those other subjects a few do find directly related careers (my nephew works in film making) but most will end up in other roles albeit most likely those where communication is a part of the role.
What is a pity though is that despite higher education being one of the few areas for which the UK is still internationally recognised, the recently departed government consistently worked to diminish it. Quite apart from starving the sector from resources, it created ever more complex visa rules to disrupt the only other main source of income, recruitment of international students (a rare successful UK export business). It would be nice to think the new government will be more supportive but unfortunately there are many other public services ahead of universities in the queue.
It’s not “snide” @Jonathan B (or at least not intended as such). It’s supply and demand. How many media studies (I could pick on many other degrees here) undergraduates end up in full time employment in the media in a role that specifically requires their degree? I’m not saying liberal arts degrees have no value. I am saying that UK plc is undersupplied with STEM and related grads and post docs. We need long term to focus on what will drive Total Factor Productivity. Just increasing the numbers enrolling into tertiary education isn’t enough, or even necessarily the right call. I’ll pray in aid here C P Snows’ “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution” (1959): “A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?”
@Delta Hedge, I am totally in agreement with that. Anyone who is considered educated should have a basic understanding of science, in the same way as they would expect scientists to be familiar with the great authors of literature.
I do think there is a matter of aptitude,which could be fostered earlier in school education, but not at the point of choosing a degree course. Someone whose interests and abilities are in the liberal arts is probably going to struggle if pushed towards a STEM degree.
In terms of HE the UK has/had a number of advantages over our international competitors
1) We still have a reputation for quality that has definitely been stretched over the last decade or so
2) We teach in English, which remains the lingua franca (!) in world business and science and are cheaper than the US. I note that many European universities now teach courses in English often with lower fees than the UK.
3) Schemes like the post-study work visa really help recruitment of international students and provide highly skilled and, largely, highly motivated workers.
In the mid-ranking institution (top 40ish UK, top 300ish world) I worked for, we found some efficiency savings through technology (e.g., online delivery, online testing, etc.) but were really stretched when it came to supervising individual work (e.g., projects) and, in particular space for labs (e.g., over a period of 20 years, we increased numbers from about 300UG to 450UG and added in 100-150 MSc students).
The increasing reliance on international students for funding has been noted within the sector for at least a decade (and even before that – e.g., the asian financial crisis in 1997 had a severe impact on recruitment) with student numbers potentially highly volatile. The process of recruitment of international students was (and presumably remains) highly efficient and strongly ‘customer’ focussed – I don’t know about the UK as a whole, but the institution I worked for was excellent at this and it paid off.
@DH (#30)
What is the use (or otherwise) of various degrees is an interesting question. A good place to find out is prospects (e.g., https://www.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/what-can-i-do-with-my-degree/media-studies).
As for the ‘Two Cultures’, the fact that we’re still talking about it over 60 years later is worrying. Any changes have to come earlier in the education system and at least two questions have to be asked
1) why do so many people get put off maths at an early age?
2) why do people in UK end up specialising at a much earlier age than in most other countries? For example, while I was happy to study the traditional 3 A-levels of the scientist (i.e., maths, physics, and chemistry), I would quite liked to have continued to study history too since I had and still have an abiding interest in the subject.
@Alan S #33
Did you have the 3 A-levels/International Baccalaureate option that is commonly available now? My youngest child has just finished Y13, following the IB route and studying Maths, Economics and German at IB “higher level” and History, Biology and English at IB “standard level”.
@SemiPassive. When the NHS was setup in the late 40s, the ratio of workers to retired was 6.6:1. It’s now 3.3:1. In twenty years it will be 2.5:1. Moreover, with healthcare and social care costs outstripping inflation and growth/productivity increases, the effective dependency ratio is even worse.
It’s not really about immigration or a few millionaires leaving. It’s about demographics leading to a totally unaffordable public sector. In the absence of a tech revolution (cheap AI robots doing boomers’ hip operations and wiping their arses), the tax burden will just rise and rise, or the public sector will need to shrink.
I’d also note it’s not true that non-EU migrants are “at best semi-skilled”. Median earnings for full-time non-EU migrants workers in 2022 were £35k vs. £32k for UK workers. On average, they are more skilled and overeducated. Perhaps we should keep the immigrants and expel the unskilled locals? I hear there are quite a few empty seats on those pre-booked flights to Rwanda.
@Factor (#34) – the IB has been available in the UK since 1971, but, as far as I can remember, not at the school I went to (late 70s). According to https://schoolsweek.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IB-supp-digi.pdf even in 2018 there were only about 140 UK schools who offered the IB. Maybe things have improved since then.
@ZX (#35)
Demographically (to be utterly clear I am not advocating this in any way), one ‘benefit’ of reducing public expenditure, particularly in health and social care, would be to help increase the ratio of workers to retired by increasing the mortality rate of old people (it is interesting to note that, IIRC, at 65, the life expectancy of a UK citizen is about two years greater than a US citizen, but that this swaps over at later ages). Politically this would be a tricky sell in a democracy.
On a more positive note, before I retired I was invited by the Japanese government to visit some of their engineering departments. Much of the robotics work they were involved in was geared to helping their elderly population including automatic turners for preventing bedsores for domestic use, non-invasive (except from a privacy pov) lifesign monitoring, shopping (Internet of Things), etc. Can’t remember any ‘auto arse wipers’, but given their fastidiousness as a society, I suspect they are already working on those too. Japan are at least a few decades further on in this demographic shift than we are.
@Alan S #36
This link, showing numbers (118) for GB, appears to be current and authoritative, and e.g. does include the state grammar school that my child attended https://www.ibo.org/programmes/find-an-ib-school/
It’s been argued that the people who have come over from Hong Kong on the Boris-backed British National Overseas visa are an example of higher skilled migrants, who have come over to escape ‘China’s politics’ – they would not come over otherwise, not with Hong Kong’s maximum 17% income tax!
When first applying for a visa to enter the UK, they have to show that they have enough money to support themselves and their family for at least 6 months (housing and food), pay for visa costs, pay NHS surcharge of £2.5k per person if they are staying for 2.5 years, (1.9k per child). They are not entitled to benefits or free prescriptions etc.
Good for the economy, when they start working and paying taxes, but perhaps not so good for the housing market, as these relatively cash-rich individuals are snapping up properties to live in, perhaps in direct competition with first time buyers.
@ZXSpectrum48k, I think what we probably can agree on is if the full time non-EU migrant workers are on only 10% more, at £35k, they are still barely at breakeven as net lifetime tax contributers (assuming they stay and become a burden on the NHS and draw state pension). It won’t cover the alarming changes in dependency ratio you mention from the 1940s to today, for not just the NHS but all public services.
I don’t know what the answer is.
But tax rises look certain.