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To: raybbr
Notice the glaring lack of reference to job growth in those sectors?

We make more widgets, but that requires less and less people. That means the widgets are cheaper, so more people can afford them and our standard of living goes up.

You don't hear anyone complaining about the fact that our incredibly productive agricultural industry only employs something like 3% of the population.

18 posted on 07/01/2005 9:00:19 AM PDT by Modernman ("Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." -Bismarck)
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To: Modernman
We make more widgets, but that requires less and less people.

No, widgets are made in China or Mexico, where it often requires MORE, but cheaper people. But widgets are then bulk-shipped to the US, where it takes fewer Americans to simply repackage them for individual retail sale. The Institute for Supply Management calls this repackaging "manufacturing", even though it really isn't.

20 posted on 07/01/2005 9:14:04 AM PDT by Willie Green (Go Pat Go!!!)
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To: Modernman; Willie Green; raybbr
...our incredibly productive agricultural industry only employs something like 3% of the population...

--and is less than one percent of the labor force.   When I was a kid I still used hear old timers complain about how important agriculture is and why the shift from agriculture to manufacturing was so awful.  They used to say that food was the only thing that mattered because "you can't eat a machine".   They'd disparage factory work as 'wage slavery' and predict the eminent collapse of the American republic.

Now we have to put up with the next generation of clowns complaining about the shift from manufacturing to services.  No matter that wages are higher and that the country is stronger.  

21 posted on 07/01/2005 9:24:51 AM PDT by expat_panama
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