Hi Ex-engineer:

In a sense you are right, that services will come after manufacturing. The pay packet that is associated with each country is really dependent on which SPECIALIZED FIELD is valued by that country. For e.g,:

1. in England, footballers in the top two leagues are better paid than the average banker, lawyer, doctor because everyone values football there highly. The pay of the academics there suck like hell (compared to academics in Singapore).

2. In Israel, defence engineers are definitely more well paid then bankers (is there a huge Israelite investment bank??) because the country is always at war and they need the most innovative ideas. So in this country, manufacturing and innovation counts.

3. In Australia, tradesmen can be more well paid than professionals because the market is big and will continue to be for a long long time.

4. In other countries which are major suppliers of commodities/energy to the world, do not be surprised if the farmer is richer than the banker.


Sadly, this won't be the case in Singapore because we are not front runners in technology (cos we are slow) and hence no one in the world will come to us for a specific technological need. And so we can only provide services.

The key to all this is SPECIALTY and the demand.