🚀 go-pugleaf

"Grinch" <oldnasty@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:6pkqlugk6pdqdb8gv7tjrlm8dl5765svn4@4ax.com...
> 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!

Agricultural barrons????  You must mean Philip Morris.  I don't know of any
filthy-rich dirt farmers.  Filthy farmers, dirt-poor farmers, but not
filthy-rich dirt farmers.

> 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?

Gee, nobody forced me to go to college or take a job as a computer
programmer.  I haven't seen any jobs at all for farm-hands.  Maybe I should
take that job as a sysadmin for the local porno site.  Now THAT'S filth!