🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 13:57:51 -0600, "Mark Martin"
<mpmartin7@mindspring.com> wrote:

>
>"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.

Um, that's the point.

>> 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.  

But you could have had a job in *manufacturing*! 

Surely that would have been better!  Better than a job in computing
services. Then there'd have been at least two of you with two dogs to
share all the money.   

>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!
>