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Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

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Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#11

Post by haecceity »

antoineMoPa wrote: post #5
marcusverus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're correct in that the production of crude is not possible without the physics. It is a necessary input, ergo physics unlocks that economic activity. It sounds like your concern is that all three fields of Physics, Engineering, and Chemistry could claim this output, which would be odd, because if every field did this, their combined 'value added' would be many times the total GDP, since their contributions overl…

Gravity keeps bank on the ground, thus physics funding is essential to the finance world. Imagine all banks floating away.

Funny. More seriously though gravity would keep banks on the ground regardless if we study it or not. So physics research doesn't really contribute in this case :(

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#12

Post by droithomme »

So they spent an absolute fortune on things which might be cool but really contributed nothing to the economy except construction and employment. And the argument is that because they wasted such a huge amount on these vapid endeavors, an incredible proportion of the entire economy, that therefore they should continue because it is "contributing" to the economy by virtue of its spending.

Give Universal Basic Income to everyone. That will spend more and then we can say with the same reasoning that UBI is worth more to the economy than retail and financial services.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#13

Post by lazyjones »

The kind of sophistry nonsense that passes as a scientific study these days is amazing.

Agriculture is worth much more than physics, since it feeds physicists all by itself. You could come up with many such dependencies to create chains of "worth more" relations, all utterly pointless. If the idea was to get more funding for physicists, it's unconvincing.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#17

Post by hogFeast »

Scientist discovers that he is very important and valuable. Much more valuable than all those idiots who didn't go to university...or those people who did go to university but earn more than scientist despite being way way more stupid then scientist.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#18

Post by Matticus_Rex »

sbdmmg wrote: post #2

The conclusion of this study is not clear at all to me. From reading their executive summary, the CEBR researchers seem to take the global value added (GVA) of any physics-based industry, and consider it as a something like a contribution of physics to the society. That sounds like a gross overestimation to me. As an example, they consider "Extraction of crude petroleum" as a physics-based industry. Naively I would c…

Yeah, you've nailed it. If a spark plug manufacturer claimed that spark plugs added [insert amount] of value to the economy and claimed the entire amount of value cars add to the economy, everyone could and should call BS on that, despite the fact that without a spark plug, the car doesn't run. It's simply bad accounting.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#19

Post by airstrike »

sbdmmg wrote: post #2

The conclusion of this study is not clear at all to me. From reading their executive summary, the CEBR researchers seem to take the global value added (GVA) of any physics-based industry, and consider it as a something like a contribution of physics to the society. That sounds like a gross overestimation to me. As an example, they consider "Extraction of crude petroleum" as a physics-based industry. Naively I would c…

> 33% physics, 33% chemistry, and 33% engineering

How about financing investments, accounting, sales, supply-chain logistics and managing the business?

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#20

Post by wott »

airstrike wrote: post #19
sbdmmg wrote: post #2

The conclusion of this study is not clear at all to me. From reading their executive summary, the CEBR researchers seem to take the global value added (GVA) of any physics-based industry, and consider it as a something like a contribution of physics to the society. That sounds like a gross overestimation to me. As an example, they consider "Extraction of crude petroleum" as a physics-based industry. Naively I would c…

> 33% physics, 33% chemistry, and 33% engineering How about financing investments, accounting, sales, supply-chain logistics and managing the business?

They obviously make up the remaining 1%.
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