Not much wealth is created in services. Being wealthy is having food to eat, energy to run homes and business's, consumables to fill homes with, commodities to build cars and trucks and computers and highways and railways and citys and towns and skyscrapers. Then if you have surplus, you trade with the rest of the world for things that you need, and that the rest of the world is better at building than we are. So we trade what we make, with other countries. So we are wealthy. And it takes just a small number of people to do all this, so this, and our productive wealth allows most of the population to work in services. So services is the major part of our GDP. So in Australia we have fabulous schools and hospitals and a police force and shops and supermarkets and every other important service industry. Cities and towns full of busy people all servicing the needs of everyone else in the city and the rest of the country.
Why isn't mining still important? It makes up most of our countries exports. It still does even though prices have dropped. It's mostly what we send overseas so that we can afford all the machinery, cars, electronic equipment that we import. Do you think anyone would sell this stuff to us if we had nothing to trade?
Yet mining employs hardly anyone! Why would it when a single employee working with multimillion dollar machines can produce tens of millions of dollars worth of a commodity? It's a minor part of out GDP, and it's obvious why!
Services make up most of Australia's GDP. Same as most other wealthy countrys. In fact, the wealthier the nation, the more services, and the more people employed in services.
Look at the worlds most dynamic economy, Singapore. 80% of Singapores workforce are employed in services. That's because the country can afford it! They export 410 billion dollars worth of mainly manufactured products in 2014.
http://www.worldstopexports.com/singapores-top-exports/2592
That's more than Australia, with a quarter of the population. Singapore's third largest exports, machinery, is bigger in size than Australia's entire agricultural exports! Yet no one would possibly say Singapore's wealth came from services. Singapore's wealth comes from it's massive ability to manufacture goods. Yet manufacturing only employs 18% of the workforce and is a minor part of Singapore's GDP if compared to services.
Works the other way too. Poor nations have very little in the way of services. Afghanistan's services sector is a tiny part of it's GDP. Three quarters of it's population are farmers. But Afghanistan is not poor because it has a small services sector. It has a small service sector because it's a poor and unproductive economy.
If services was what made nations wealthy, then you've solved the worlds poverty problem. All Afghanistan and Ethiopia and Sudan and every other poverty ridden place has to do is go and build a heap of hospitals, schools, highways, railways, shopping centres, etc and on and on. Hang on! They have no wealth to do that!
Think about it?
See ya's.
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