Gary R Coffman writes:
On 9 Aug 2003 15:58:42 -0700, jim rozen wrote:

Hmm. OK I'll bite here. If one follows this out to the
ultimate end, the implication is there will not be anyone
left in the US who can afford to buy a car, at some point
in the future. Because they're all unemployed, yes.

They'd only all be unemployed if you made the assumption
that they're all employed in manufacturing now. But that's
an unwarranted assumption. In fact, less than 8% of the
US workforce is employed in manufacturing now.

I think the question is what happens if there's a sudden 8% jump
in our unemployment rate (or whatever the number is).

The US economy is not primarily a manufacturing economy,
and it hasn't been one for at least 50 years. Even then that
was just a blip caused by war time production requirements.
Over the course of the last century, the primary occupation
of the US work force has moved from agriculture to service
jobs, with a short period of domination by manufacturing
centered during and just after WWII.

That's interesting, are you saying the shift to a service economy
happened *before* WWII? So all that stuff about manufacturing in
the 50s and 60s was just window dressing? (Or is that what you
mean by "and just after"? Meaning the shift happened around 1950?)