Re: Wrong analysis from the get-go
There has been countries that happily started to kill their manufacturing industry in the late 1970s (while trade unions kept on trying to defend the inefficiencies, instead of true jobs and salaries) with the promise that a New Dawn made of services and wealth for everyone was close. White collar jobs for everybody (maybe in government offices), the "dirty work" somewhere far away.
You may wonder to whom you sell services, and how many could be employed in a service-oriented labour market, when manufacturing disappear.
So you got shopping centers instead of factories, labourers instead of skilled workers - while manufacturing was mostly offshored, and then most services as welll - just to serve the lifestyle of the few who actually took advantage of the few high-end services that may have a worldwide market (i.e. the financial sector). It is true for IT services as well - you need someone to sell them to. By themselves, they are of little use, but for entertainment. And we see an IT industry that moved to the entertainment side. Facebook, Netflix, no real product and no real wealth produced. They consume wealth produced elsewhere - but how long?
Politicians never asked themselves how what could work for Switzerland (8 million citizens, which nevertheless has strong manufacturing in some sectors) or Luxembourg (500.000) could work for countries with tens or hundreds of millions of citizens.
It's interesting to note that countries who kept a strong manufacturing industry, i.e. Germany and Japan, have very low unemployment rates - and even that rate alone doesn't tell everything, there's a difference in being, for example, an highly skilled mechanical worker (with a strong union behind), and a fast food waiter (or moving boxed at an online retailer warehouse outsourcer).
It's also interesting how the school system work in those countries. Very selective. In other parts of the world requiring high standards became "wrong", and it even didn't help to counter drop outs and teenager issues. It just created generations of little prepared men and women, probably because elites believed they were easier to master through media. Just, even media can't always tell people what to think... and every true democracy has self-destroy button built-in. Sometimes, it gets triggered.