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Sure, but manufacturing and farming, making things, is the actual financial foundation of an economy. Service sector depends on the existence of sound economica

by bugsy 16y ago

Sure, but manufacturing and farming, making things, is the actual financial foundation of an economy. Service sector depends on the existence of sound economical functioning of the jobs that produce things in order to function. If no one is making anything, real income is not being produced, and it is inevitable that the service sector must then collapse as it depends on the former for its health.

hga 16y ago
True ... but why draw lines at the semi-artificial boundaries of countries? Can you properly refer to e.g. the US as "an economy" or "part of the world's economy"? You're also, I think, focusing too much on the labor input into manufacturing and farming. We're doing very well in those sectors, but not with a whole lot of labor. In fact, fantastically decreasing the labor in farming was thought to be a good thing, and from the viewpoints of my parents, who were born in the early to mid '30s and who grew up on farms, I can assure that's largely true on the micro scale....
- bugsy 16y ago
  Sure we're doing well using imported oil to run equipment, using natural gas to manufacture fertilizer (this runs out in less than 10 years according to reserve divided by newly built 'clean gas plant' consumption), and latin slave labor to do what remains of the stoop labor. It's not the existence of backbreaking labor that makes creating things valuable, it's the fact that things are being created which have value and which can be sold. Ultimately sold to people with oil and gas perhaps. There's only so many banking services they need for their petrodollars. Involving ordinary people in manufacturing endeavors keeps them from committing crimes during the hours they are awake, and provides them with an income which supports industries such as services which are greatly dependent on volume of services provided. Services mentioned like firefighting and police and teachers depend on taxes which depend on income of the general populace, only a few of which are CEOs who live in ivory towers with gilded gates; or depend on volume such as tax preparation and retail sales. In either case you need the general population to be employed doing something. That something can be productive or not. If not productive, the economy collapses on itself as it finds itself unable to import things it needs because it has nothing of value to trade. The gentleman made a comment that services jobs are being lost as well. Yes, but that is a direct consequence of the loss of manufacturing jobs which create actual goods of value using many people, who then are able to direct some of the income generated from goods creation to support these other secondary dependent industries.

by bugsy 16y ago

hga 16y ago

True ... but why draw lines at the semi-artificial boundaries of countries? Can you properly refer to e.g. the US as "an economy" or "part of the world's economy"? You're also, I think, focusing too much on the labor input into manufacturing and farming. We're doing very well in those sectors, but not with a whole lot of labor. In fact, fantastically decreasing the labor in farming was thought to be a good thing, and from the viewpoints of my parents, who were born in the early to mid '30s and who grew up on farms, I can assure that's largely true on the micro scale....

bugsy 16y ago
Sure we're doing well using imported oil to run equipment, using natural gas to manufacture fertilizer (this runs out in less than 10 years according to reserve divided by newly built 'clean gas plant' consumption), and latin slave labor to do what remains of the stoop labor. It's not the existence of backbreaking labor that makes creating things valuable, it's the fact that things are being created which have value and which can be sold. Ultimately sold to people with oil and gas perhaps. There's only so many banking services they need for their petrodollars. Involving ordinary people in manufacturing endeavors keeps them from committing crimes during the hours they are awake, and provides them with an income which supports industries such as services which are greatly dependent on volume of services provided. Services mentioned like firefighting and police and teachers depend on taxes which depend on income of the general populace, only a few of which are CEOs who live in ivory towers with gilded gates; or depend on volume such as tax preparation and retail sales. In either case you need the general population to be employed doing something. That something can be productive or not. If not productive, the economy collapses on itself as it finds itself unable to import things it needs because it has nothing of value to trade. The gentleman made a comment that services jobs are being lost as well. Yes, but that is a direct consequence of the loss of manufacturing jobs which create actual goods of value using many people, who then are able to direct some of the income generated from goods creation to support these other secondary dependent industries.