Manufacturing is a good example of a sector whose performance is becoming completely disconnected from its labor figures. Manufacturing employment in the U.S. has been steadily declining since it peaked in 1979, but our industrial output has grown considerably.
>>That’s how you end up with burdensome mandates that deter businesses from operating efficiently at all. It’s also how you end up with massive numbers of people employed by government.
The “burdensome mandate” argument would have some actual weight if the stock market did not reach a new record level a couple times a year. The decision makers in the board room and in DC all know that they are creating profits without jobs, so the government creates fiat currency to prop up the economy that the little people live in through direct payments and an inflated bureaucracy that employs a huge number of people in the only good paying, secure jobs that are available to working Americans.
We had a functioning economy before personal computers and automation and we built things that lasted many years and were repairable. Everyone acts like a small decrease in economic efficiency will doom the economy. When your only metric is the value of the stock market, I guess that’s true. But if your metric is the economic health of the American people, then the picture begins to change.