To cover the loss of manufacturing jobs, our government has invented the catch phrase "service economy".
To cover the loss of manufacturing jobs, our government has invented the catch phrase "service economy". This is the idiotic notion that we don't need to actually sell manufactured products; that we can grow and prosper our nation by doing each other's laundry for a fee. To conceal the loss of manufacturing jobs, the government has legislated into existence thousands upon thousands of useless paper-shuffling jobs, and declared their necessity by fiat. The most obvious is the income tax which has been so obfuscated by the government that half of you had to rely on an outside expert to figure out just what all those incomprehensible words really meant. By this device, the government has replaced those jobs that made products to sell with an equal number of jobs that produce nothing whatsoever of any worth, except to keep the unemployment figures down. This over-burdening of the American people with gratuitous regulations and paperwork has accomplished nothing except to obfuscate the loss of manufacturing jobs, and to transform the American character from innovators and inventors creating new products to that of minor clerks, peeking under each other's seat cushions for lost change.