🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ajjj68$1nk$1@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>, Mark Martin
<mpmartin7@mindspring.com> writes
>
>"Jim Blair" <jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu> wrote in message
>news:ajbja7$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?
>
>
I think the Luddites (followers of John Ludd) used to say this at the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England in 1811-1812. They
said the machines would take away peoples' jobs and they would all
starve so they went round in gangs wrecking factories and machinery. Of
course, with hindsight, it did not happen but workers had to change
their jobs from hand work in cottage industries and labouring in the
fields to factory work and driving tractors and harvesters. It resulted
in far less people working on the land and more in factories and
offices. 

Don't forget that someone has to design, manufacture, install and
maintain the equipment in your lowly manned factory. They may not be in
the factory itself but they are beavering away somewhere else and the
added efficiency raises everyone's standard of living on average. 
>
>
>

-- 
David Wilkinson