[foolmeonce]

I don't really see that. Working very hard in the UK pays very little, less than most second cities in the US, and it generally requires living in or near London with one of the highest costs in the world.

The general problem with the UK is that it has the expectations of being treated according to its legacy. It expects the world to keep throwing away money on financial services in London, because?! As part of the EU, if they switched to Euro, that could have made a little sense.

I think the US also spent the last two decades going into that legacy rut where it expects it can sell high priced information while becoming increasingly disconnected from the actual places information is used. The US is quite lucky to have had some industrial restart thanks to greater automation.

[LatteLazy]

People buy financial services because they're really really useful and important. I don't know why some don't see that. But no one is paying bankers trillions just because of our legacy.

I agree the uk and London are high cost. For the uk that won't change. For London, it's high cost and high wage. Maybe when the wages disappear the costs will fall. But I don't think that's what people want. At least not what they claim to want.

[foolmeonce]

Finance is important, a foreign national paying a premium for the inconvenience of services being conducted in London is a very old signal that is approaching worthless. It probably made a lot more sense when language barrier issues required a native English speaking intermediary.

The wages in the UK are embarrassing, I think your reference must be within the UK and maybe part of Europe? There is simply limited capacity and a lot of old legacy things competing to occupy London. Plenty of east coast US cities are similar. Not enough going on, but insufficient housing stock. Rents take too much of the profits and are driven up by older businesses owning things they could not afford to rent at the market price on their income.

[LatteLazy]

I'm not following your point on finance, surely people paying a premium (either cash or inconvenience) for London shows London is either the only supplier or a very high quality one? Otherwise why not buy local?

[foolmeonce]

> Otherwise why not buy local?

Yes, why not? Reasons like expertise on EU investments in English were already an eroding advantage. Many finance groups were already reducing the portion of their staff there and are now moving more of their staff to offices in the EU.

(The UK was in a tough spot because it wouldn't commit to the EU. The fix was to make a worse choice, the UK is too small and too dependent on eroding advantages to maintain what it had.)