🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 13:18:36 -0600, "Mark Martin"
<mpmartin7@mindspring.com> wrote:

>
>"Jim Blair" <jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu> wrote in message
>news:ajbja7$n54$2@news.doit.wisc.edu...
>> VOR <vorcycles@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>> >The employment in the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy is now
>> >approaching levels not seen in 40 years!!! Take a look at the chart
>> >analysis for the U.S. manufacturing employment, unemployment rate,
>> >capacity utilization, and housing starts at
>> >
>> >  http://www.mktcycles.com/econdata.htm
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> So manufacturing employment is dropping but industrial production is
>> rising?  Note that productivity is also rising (and unemployment
>> dropping).
>>
>> It is taking ever fewer people to make ever more goods?  That is GOOD.
>
>I don't have the reference at the moment, but some professor somewhere said
>something like "The factory of the future will have just two employees.  A
>man to watch the equipment, and a dog to keep the man from touching
>anything."
>
>So what happens when one guy and his dog make all the money, and the rest of
>us are unemployed?  Do we take turns watching to see if the dog died yet?
		
Once upon a time 75% of total employment in the US was in agriculture.
It's dropped to 2% today -- although farms produce vastly more today,
due to much higher productivity, of course.

Look at the 73% unemployment in the US now!  Look at how US wealth now
is concentrated among those 2% of agricultural barrons -- how they get
all the money!

Wouldn't life be better if agricultural productivity had remained low,
so we all of necessity still lived and worked on the farm, and none of
us had been forced into those 98% of other lousy jobs that make up a
modern economy?