One of the symptoms (and causes) of the finance curse is the ‘brain drain’ out of other sectors – industry, tourism, agriculture, government, etc. – into overpaid financial jobs. As one academic paper summarises:
“Finance literally bids rocket scientists away from the satellite industry. The result is that erstwhile scientists, people who in another age dreamt of curing cancer or flying to Mars, today dream of becoming hedge fund managers.”
The attached graph from the same paper shows one finance-cursed result: this brain drain is bad for the economy. Now the Financial Times has just written an article entitled ‘The best reader comments and contributions of 2018,” which contains a contribution almost exactly confirming this analysis, but on a personal level: Continue reading