Abstract
In this text, Ha-Joon Chang strongly contests the idea according from which we are currently in a post-industrial age. Such statement derives from the current disappearance of the manufactory industry in the developed countries in favor of the tertiary sector and thus of a service economy. This is actually due to the fact that with the rise of prosperity within a country, an increasing desire for services appears in the context of a so called knowledge-based society. Chang however contrasts the theory of a post-industrial age by arguing that the industry didn't become less important, but only less expensive compared to the increasing services' prices. He therefore argues that de-industrialization cannot be an efficient way of growth as services actually are unable to trigger greater growth by themselves and won't be sufficient to keep an equilibrated commercial balance as they are hardly exportable, unlike industrial goods.
The author details the process of the tertiarization of the economy with the example of the decrease of the formerly dominant share of the manufacturing industry in the British GDP. Such phenomenon is actually normal according to the dominant economic theory. Alfred Sauvy theorized the overflow of employment from one sector to another as a function of the evolution of the society; he first shows that employments moved from the primary sector (agriculture) towards the secondary with the Western industrial revolution, and later towards the primary sector.
