# Can A Country Survive By Flipping Hamburgers and Retail Jobs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 15, 2004, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247 "2004-07-15T13:08:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/1 "2004-07-15T13:08:19Z")
I see many disturbing trneds going on in the USA…mostly related to de-industrialization. Recently, a local factory (making furnaces )closed down-the assembly lines have been shipped to China, where the furnaces will be made with Chinese labor, costing perhaps one tenth the price as here. Who wants to move it? WALMART! they have trumpeted the fact that they will “create” 100-odd jobs…paying (in most cases) minimum wage, part-time, and no health insurance. So, we have (it seems) traded 100 high-paying jobs for 100 third-world type jobs. Consider the drop in purchasing power…the jobs lost paid between 12.00- 25.00 $/hour…and the new jobs pay 7-8&/hour. In addition to this, each of the factory jobs supported allied jobs at suppliers, in purchasing, trucking, shipping, and other services as well-perhaops another 100 jobs dissappear as well. Meanwhile, Walmart keeps telling us what a great place it is to work in! I remember the story about a town in California-Walmart annouced they would set up shop, and the town fell over themselves to attract them-they wound up giving Walmart tax concessions, paid for road improvements, sewers, etc. Then, they found out that each job that walmart brought was costing them money! WaLMART EVEN FORCED THE HEALTHCARE COSTS ON TO THE LOCAL COMMUNITY, BECAUSE THEY FIRED EMPLOYESS JUST BEFORE THEY WOULD BE ELIGIBLE FOR HEALTH INSURANCE! Doesn’t anybody in government care about what’s going on? Sometimes I wonder! ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/2 "2004-07-15T13:18:55Z")
I am an MBA. When it comes to offshoring, I say: show me the NUMBERS! How much are you really going to save by moving production to China? Also: How will quality be affected? How will your image be affected? How much is the “Made in USA” label itself worth on that product? You hear a lot of bitching about offshoring, but rarely does the media give you a breakdown of a particular case/decision. Without concrete data, my sympathies cannot lean either way. Soon in this thread you will have Sam Stone or whoever reassuring you with bromides to the effect that it’s all for the good: Those people who lost their jobs will go on to even more productive work, the American and World economies will grow, and both Chinese and USAians will feel joy. Again, I’d like to see the numbers. No, not data for the past few decades. Not reassurances that past successes will continue. I want to see the hard proof that things will be OK HEREAFTER. Some offshorings are definitely junk jobs that we should not regret losing. Some are not. Some are opportunities for the companies that decide so. Some are probably mistakes. Some of them we can prevent. Some we can’t. Etc. Numbers, please. No bromides allowed! ---
**Author:** ![Jervoise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jervoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jervoise)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/3 "2004-07-15T14:31:21Z")
In a nutshell: Walmart trims fat. Walmart cuts prices. American Consumers attracted to low prices. American Consumer spends money at Walmart. Walmart makes profits. Walmart’s American Workers keep their jobs. Walmart’s Shareholders happy. Because of lower prices, American Consumer has more disposable income. American Consumer (and Walmart’s happy shareholders) can buy more good-ies and services-ies from Other Businesses. Other Businesses happy. Other Businesses employ more American Workers to meet demand. American Economy is happy. At same time, Chinese Wa-mart employs Chinese Workers to supply Walmart with Stuff. Chinese Workers have jobs. Chinese Economy is happy. Chinese Economy is growing. Chinese Workers have disposable income. Chinese Workers consume American good-ies and service-ies. Walmart and Other Businesses happy. Walmart and Other Businesses employ American Workers. American Workers happy. Just another day in the free market Circle of Life, Grasshopper. ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/4 "2004-07-15T14:32:39Z")
I’m not going to give numbers, but I’m not going to say everything’s wonderful either. What’s going on does suck for some people. Increased and/or freer trade means that the relatively abundant factor gains and those industries that are relatively intensive in that factor prosper. The relatively scarce factor and those industries intensive in it lose. In the US, that’s the old industrial manufacturing industries and the workers that supply them. Lower skill occupations in less traded margin industries like retailing will still get screwed because of the reduced competition for workers of that type. That doesn’t mean there won’t be jobs in that skill category, just that over time it will become a less and less well-paying job. What the US has a comparative advantage in is highly human capital intensive industries. These industries will gain and will pay for the imports of furnaces and such. And factor suppliers for those industries and the related ones will gain. The recent “tech wreck” bubble merely obscures the underlying gains to knowledge intensive occupations. The story about the “gains from trade” that economists talk about (I’m one BTW) are more properly called potential gains from trade. You can hand-wave and invoke dynamic gains to pretend that everyone’s a winner, but at least in the medium term, changing patterns of world trade will create a lot of losers in the US. That doesn’t mean that trade restrictions are a good way to go: the key point about the gains from trade is that the winners win by more than the losers lose (in jargon, the outcome is potentially Pareto superior). In other words, you should be able to ease the transition to different (and better-paid) work for the losers and compensate them to some degree and still have something left over. In the longer term the net job losses are going to be zero. Some occupations are going to be bad ones with lower wages and fewer takers, some good ones with better pay and conditions and lots of newly-minted graduates. Anything that you think of as a minimum wage job is going to be crap and getting worse - poor, declining pay and uncertain ongoing employment prospects. ---
**Author:** ![Renob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8c91f0/32.png) [@Renob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renob)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/5 "2004-07-15T15:02:33Z")
It’s a mistake to simply look at a smal sector of your local economy and extrapolate doom and gloom for the reat of the nation. Just because some factories are shutting down locally does not mean that the nation’s economy is on the road to ruin. Here are some interesting assertions I recently read in Reason magazine: [http://www.reason.com/0407/fe.bl.truths.shtml](http://www.reason.com/0407/fe.bl.truths.shtml) > [@](#): > > The ongoing growth in total employment is frequently dismissed on the ground that most of the new positions being created are low-paying, dead-end “McJobs.” The facts show otherwise. > > Managerial and specialized professional jobs have grown rapidly, nearly doubling between 1983 and 2002, from 23.6 million to 42.5 million. These challenging, high-paying positions have jumped from 23.4 percent of total employment to 31.1 percent. > > And these high-quality jobs will continue growing in the years to come. According to projections for 2002-12 prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, management, business, financial, and professional positions will grow from 43.2 million to 52 million, increasing from 30 percent of total employment to 31.5 percent. And > [@](#): > > It is true that manufacturing’s share of gross domestic product has been declining gradually over time – from 27 percent in 1960 to 13.9 percent in 2002. The percentage of workers employed in manufacturing likewise has been falling, from 28.4 percent to 11.7 percent during the same period. But the primary cause of these trends is the superior productivity of American manufacturers. As shown in Figure 3, output per hour in the overall nonfarm business sector rose 50 percent between 1980 and 2002; by contrast, manufacturing output per hour shot up 103 percent. In other words, goods are getting cheaper and cheaper relative to services. Since this faster productivity growth has not been matched by a corresponding increase in demand for manufactured goods, the result is that Americans are spending relatively less on manufactures. Accordingly, manufacturing’s shrinking share of the overall economy is actually a sign of American manufacturing prowess. > > Exactly the same phenomenon has played out over a longer period in agriculture. In 1870, 47.6 percent of total employment was in farming. By 2002 the figure had fallen to 1.7 percent. In the future, manufacturing will in all likelihood continue down the trail blazed by agriculture. People who bemoan this prospect don’t recognize economic progress when they see it. > > International trade has had only a modest effect on manufacturing’s declining share of the economy. It is true that imports displace some domestic production. On the other hand, exports boost sales for American manufacturers. The U.S. has been running a manufacturing trade deficit in recent years, but even if trade had been in balance between 1960 and 2002 the manufacturing share of GDP still would have fallen sharply, down to an estimated 16 percent (as opposed to the actual 13.9 percent). Innovation creates a steady, relentless drop in manufacturing’s share of economic activity. As well as > [@](#): > > Although offshoring does eliminate jobs, it also yields important benefits. To the extent that companies can reduce costs by shifting certain operations overseas, they are increasing productivity. The process of competition ultimately passes the resulting cost savings on to consumers, which then spurs demand for other goods and services. Whether caused by the introduction of new technology or by new ways to organize work, productivity increases translate into economic growth and rising overall living standards. > > In particular, offshoring encourages the diffusion of I.T. throughout the American economy. According to Catherine Mann at the Institute for International Economics, globalized production of I.T. hardware – that is, the offshoring of computer-related manufacturing – has accounted for 10 percent to 30 percent of the drop in hardware prices. The resulting increase in productivity encouraged the rapid spread of computer use and thereby added some $230 billion in cumulative additional GDP between 1995 and 2002. > > Offshoring offers the potential to take a similar bite out of prices for I.T. software and services. Those price reductions will promote the further spread of I.T. and new business processes that take advantage of cheap technology. As Mann notes, health services and construction are two large and important sectors that today feature low I.T. intensity (as measured by I.T. equipment per worker) and below-average productivity growth. Diffusion of I.T. into these and other sectors could prompt a new round of productivity growth such as that provoked by the globalization of hardware production during the 1990s. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/6 "2004-07-15T15:35:18Z")
> [@hawthorne](#): > > That doesn’t mean that trade restrictions are a good way to go: the key point about the gains from trade is that the winners win by more than the losers lose (in jargon, the outcome is potentially Pareto superior). In other words, you should be able to ease the transition to different (and better-paid) work for the losers and compensate them to some degree and still have something left over. HA! The rich are already taxed too high, remember? They made that money fair and square! No one was forced to have a manufacturing job! etc etc :barf: I have no problem, generally, with free trade, but I think that the people who stand to benefit so much from it need to realize that they’re crippling the workforce for their own _selfish_ gain. But of course, any form of redistrubution based on offshoring will look like “protectionism” i.e. penalizing companies that do it through a tax code, even if we were to try an optimize the solution as you indicate. How would you suppose we handle this? ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/7 "2004-07-15T16:03:53Z")
> [@Jervoise](#): > > Other Businesses happy. Other Businesses employ more American Workers to meet demand. American Economy is happy. > > At same time, Chinese Wa-mart employs Chinese Workers to supply Walmart with Stuff. Chinese Workers have jobs. Chinese Economy is happy. > > Chinese Economy is growing. Chinese Workers have disposable income. Chinese Workers consume American good-ies and service-ies. Walmart and Other Businesses happy. Walmart and Other Businesses employ American Workers. American Workers happy. > > Just another day in the free market Circle of Life, Grasshopper. These were the bromides I was talking about, people. Numbers! ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/8 "2004-07-15T16:12:02Z")
_Reason_ is Libertarian propaganda. Please label it as such. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![av8rmike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/edb3f5/32.png) [@av8rmike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/av8rmike)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/9 "2004-07-15T16:40:03Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > These were the bromides I was talking about, people. Numbers! > [@Aeschines](#): > > No, not data for the past few decades. Not reassurances that past successes will continue. I want to see the hard proof that things will be OK HEREAFTER. So, basically you’re asking that we _prove_ the _future??_ :dubious: Sure, just as soon as I finish that time machine. ---
**Author:** ![Renob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8c91f0/32.png) [@Renob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renob)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/10 "2004-07-15T17:09:02Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > _Reason_ is Libertarian propaganda. Please label it as such. Thanks. Yes, it is a libertarian magazine. So what? You can’t simply negate what is being said in that article by labeling it “libertarian.” ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/11 "2004-07-15T17:39:07Z")
I’m by no means a libertarian, but I thought the quotes from that article were fine (and, in the bonus round, broadly agreed with my post). > [@](#): > > _erislove_ > How would you suppose we handle this? I’ll return to this, it’s bedtime here. Generally, not with trade interventions. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/12 "2004-07-15T19:09:04Z")
> [@Jervoise](#): > > Chinese Economy is growing. Chinese Workers have disposable income. Chinese Workers consume American good-ies and service-ies. Considering that, for this model to work, Wal-Mart buys cheap goods from China to put in its stores, what incentive is there for the Chinese Workers to buy American “good-ies and service-ies”? They might as well buy direct from their own factories instead, _n’est pas?_ ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/13 "2004-07-15T19:16:16Z")
You always give answers worth waiting for, **hawthorne**. Sleep away. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/14 "2004-07-15T19:56:24Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > Considering that, for this model to work, Wal-Mart buys cheap goods from China to put in its stores, what incentive is there for the Chinese Workers to buy American “good-ies and service-ies”? They might as well buy direct from their own factories instead, _n’est pas?_ None whatsoever, except if the goods or services cannot be produced locally with adequate quality and for less $$. ---
**Author:** ![raindog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@raindog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raindog)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/15 "2004-07-15T22:02:55Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > I am an MBA… I think you have a credible case for getting ALL of your tuition back. Clearly a fraud has been committed… ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/16 "2004-07-15T22:51:36Z")
Has anybody considered the national security angle? In the Second World War, America’s staggering industrial capacity gave it a tremendous advantage in the war. I understand that immediately after Germany declared war on the US, Albert Speer, Hitler’s right hand man when it came to managing the economy, took one look at projected figures for America’s war production and decided then and there that Germany would lose the war. Do we even have that kind of industrial capacity today? In the unlikely event that a conflict on the scale of WWII broke out, could we muster the kind of massive wartime output that we managed 65 years ago? How much of our razzle dazzle weaponry depends on electronic components manufactured overseas? Could our shipyards turn out 2000 Liberty ships a year? Something to think about the next time you hear about a factory being closed and moved to China … ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2004, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/17 "2004-07-15T23:32:22Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > Has anybody considered the national security angle? Yes. (more below) > [@](#): > > In the Second World War, America’s staggering industrial capacity gave it a tremendous advantage in the war … Do we even have that kind of industrial capacity today? … well, we just bought billions of bullets from Israel, what does that tell ya? (now for the “more below”) Our military might (in theory) no longer relies on mass producing large quantities of munitions. We aren’t geared for a long-term conflict anymore; we are much more geared to fight several short wars where our sheer operational firepower and technological advantages overwhelm the enemy. Further, our _military_ industrial capacity is almost entirely self-contained (minus some munitions and a few odd vehicle contracts I mentioned above) in that we build the vast majority of our own vehicles, missiles, etc from raw material to composite GPS-guided computer-controlled death. No one outside of Russia has that kind of capability, and the Russians can’t afford it themselves. The question is, then, are the above scenarios going to benefit us if we do happen to get into a long, dragged out war? The answer to that is, “wake me up when someone threatens me with it.” ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2004, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/18 "2004-07-16T01:17:14Z")
Isn’t there a saying about a town where “everyone is taking in everyone else’s laundry”? In other words, you can’t have JUST a service economy without someone producing something (unless you’re completely dependent on providing services to foreigners)? It’s an article of faith that in the VERY long term (centuries??) an unfettered global free market will be to the benefit of everyone, as water finds it’s own level and inequalites even out… But as **hawthorne** pointed out, in the medium term (decades??) there will probably be a lot of pain. And I can see at some point people in the US questioning why we’re working so hard to make the Third World wealthier seemingly at our expense. There ARE good reasons- but tell that to someone who was downsized and now makes half the wage he used to. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2004, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/19 "2004-07-16T04:17:40Z")
> [@](#): > > Managerial and specialized professional jobs have grown rapidly, nearly doubling between 1983 and 2002, from 23.6 million to 42.5 million. These challenging, high-paying positions have jumped from 23.4 percent of total employment to 31.1 percent. Here’s my problem with the numbers. I believe the currently employed count is around 150 million in this country. That means that almost 1/3 of them falls into this category of “Managerial and specialized professional”. I work in a highly technical company, with an extremely vertical org chart, and even we don’t have that sort of percentage of folks I would categorize in this way. They also do not show how much these new jobs in this category pay, thus making it harder to reverse-engineer what type of jobs they really are. I couldn’t find it on the census chart anywhere, but I’d love to see a breakdown of what they decide to place into this category. Perhaps “burger-flipper” is a specialized profession these days, and perhaps “head cashier” is a management function. Also, choosing to compare today to 1983 seems a bit odd, unless you were trying to skew things. In case no one remembers, 1982 and 1983 were the years of highest unemployment for a long time, likely requiring you to go back to the Great Depresssion to find higher rates. It was widely called the “Great Recession” and there were plenty of folks who were afraid the Great Depression was about to repeat itself. I’m actually for global free trade, but I want it done much more painlessly than is currently happening. We don’t open up dams all at once, letting the water flood everything in sight, and that’s the route we seem to be taking here. That’s likely an argument for a different thread, so I’ll stop here. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2004, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247/20 "2004-07-16T05:10:28Z")
One thing I have wondering about is: It is generally accepted that the wealthy under this administration had incomes grow by 186 percent, whereas the middle class and the poor increased by about 3 percent. Huge disparity, of course, with the income gains fo the middle class and the poor barely keeping up with the cost of living. At the same time, we are seeing the trend toward outsourcing and the growing trend of McJobs replacing real jobs that can support a family. Here’s what I think is happening: in a stagnant economy, the wealthy have been keeping the party going for themselves by cannibalizing the wealth the middle class has built up since the postwar economic boom of the 50s. They have by no means destroyed the middle class, but they may eventually do so if the middle class and the poor don’t get off the barrel and pull their pants up from around their ankles. I think the mechanism by which this is being accomplished is by lowering costs for goods and services through automation, outsourcing and productivity gains. This generally means layoffs and firings, leaving people unemployed, or more typically, radically underemployed. The people who own the corporations or get considerable income from shares in them do very well for the time being, because the displaced workers naturally try to maintain income by having more family members work and/or by working two jobs where possible. Or they drop major plans like home ownership or sending thier kids to college. But they can still afford to buy the consumer goods and services that keep the wealthy happy. And growing Third World markets mean that this trend may hurt Americans even if the underemployed American workers eventually lose their ability to buy most discretionary goods and services. Americans need to wake up. This “free market” bullshit is gonna turn us all into mindless cogs in the machine, with no free time and not enough income to enjoy it, if we let it continue. There is no such thing as a “free market” an economy is just a social engine we build. As long as we pay attention to how it works, we can build it any way we like. We don’t HAVE to let the wealthy have all the money. That’s just bought-and-paid-for bullshit. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-country-survive-by-flipping-hamburgers-and-retail-jobs/255247.md?page=2)