[marketcorrection] Don Boudreaux: Who Wants to Work On an Assembly Line?

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Posted by Don Boudreaux:
Who Wants to Work On an Assembly Line?
http://marketcorrection.powerblogs.com/posts/1178204520.shtml


   13 August 2006
   Editor, The Washington Post
   1150 15th St., NW
   Washington, DC 20071
   Dear Editor:
   Karl von Schriltz is distressed that America has three million fewer
   manufacturing jobs today than in 2000 (Letters, August 13). He should
   relax. Eighty percent of America's economy now is in the service
   sector - the sector with the best jobs.
   In an economic unit smaller than the US economy - the family -
   applause rather than distress typically greets the "loss" of
   manufacturing jobs. For example, my parents are delighted that I work
   in the service sector, as a college professor, rather than in the
   manufacturing sector (shipbuilding) that employed my father and
   grandfather. I'm delighted, too. If almost everyone aspires, for
   themselves and for their children, to work in service-sector jobs such
   as physician, lawyer, architect, journalist, and educator, why should
   we lament an economy that increasingly allows us to fulfill this
   aspiration?
   Sincerely,
   Donald J. Boudreaux
   Chairman, Department of Economics
   George Mason University