It we can produce more goods with less people than society becomes wealthier.
Your mindset, or wanting to hold on to specific types of jobs would have left us with three quarters of Americans working on farms.
Because the vast majority of service jobs are not doctors, lawyers and engineers. Instead, they are jobs typically found at a McDonalds, or a Walmart or a movie theater; jobs that don't pay squat.
It isn't accurate to say the vast majority of services jobs are at places like McDonalds or Walmart, or that don't pay squat. Not only are their doctors and lawyers and engineers, there are programmers, and managers, and HR reps, and legal secretaries, and nurses, and plumbers, and HVAC techs, and interior designers etc. "Service job" doesn't equal low paying job.
If there we didn't import anything, manufacturing jobs would still be declining as a percentage of the work force. It takes less people to produce stuff than it used to. That's called a productivity increase. Stamp that out and you stamp out any hope for serious per capita economic growth.
As for "He then goes on to compare evaluative data involving the manu. sector for the years 1966, 1976, 1986, and 1996" you forgot to add 2006, which he mentions as the all time peak for American manufacturing. Not that 2007 is a decline, but 2007 isn't over yet (and even when it is it will be months before the data are available) |
