I posted last year about the widespread cargo cult which elevates manufacturing jobs above all. Don Boudreaux has a great post over at Café Hayek on this very topic and I think this particular quote really nails it:
Service-sector jobs are the most desirable. Until his retirement, my dad had a manufacturing job: he worked as a welder in a shipyard. Like most parents, his dream was for his children to become doctors or lawyers and the like. Ever hear a parent say “I want my boy to grow up to be a pipe-fitter!” or “My dream is for little Suzy one day to operate her very own sewing machine in a clothing factory!”
My father worked with a man who was, from what my father said, a first rate accountant. He was handsomely paid for his efforts at the bank where my father worked. Yet, this man maintained until he retired that he preferred his 18 years on the line at the local Ford plant. He said he knew each day that all he had to do was install 28 radiators in car engines and he was done. No pressure. Great comraderie.
Of course, this attitude is probably provides a good picture of what was wrong there and why Ford closed the plant (forcing this man to go to night school where he got his degree in Accounting).
Posted by: John | May 11, 2006 at 12:45 PM
I agree that there's nothing necessarily good about making stuff, but his definition of 'the service sector' seems to imply that working in a 500-angry-dudes-a-day call centre has something important in common with, say, being a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic. It might have in technical terms - the intangibility of what gets 'produced' - but I can't imagine parents dreaming about their kids working in the former.
Posted by: Hugh Green | May 12, 2006 at 10:08 AM
It's actually not his definition - he's referring to a piece by Paul Craig Roberts which bracketed all "domestic service" jobs together in order to make an erroneous claim that America was becoming a nation of bartenders and waitresses.
Posted by: Frank McGahon | May 12, 2006 at 10:44 AM
Ah, fair enough. See what happens when you read posts and flip burgers at the same time?
Posted by: Hugh Green | May 12, 2006 at 12:51 PM