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Greg H
03-03-2004, 07:21 AM
If you can't create jobs one way, do it another way.
Burgerflipping may be redefined as manufacturing if APOTUS and his handlers gets their way.
That will get the numbers up! smile.gif

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=11041748&BRD=988&PAG=461&dept_id=141269&rfi=6

"Those who say President Bush has a credibility problem don't understand how quickly this administration can respond with a solution.

The Bush White House can simply declare, with some clever way to redefine the issue, that the credibility gap doesn't exist. Problem solved.

Frankly, the president's people don't receive enough credit for innovation.

Take, for example, their newest solution to the shrinking number of manufacturing jobs in America: Issue a decree that fast-food workers are manufacturing employees.

Instantly, you create millions of new manufacturing jobs.

Bush's new Economic Report of the President raises the prospect of fast-food factories by suggesting that cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat and fixings into a bun is the equivalent of assembling an automobile.

According to The New York Times, the idea of reclassifying fast-food restaurants as manufacturers is buried in 417 pages of statistics included in the new report. But Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, is certainly not shying away from this plan. In a speech last week to economists in Washington, Mankiw said that classifying hamburger flippers as manufacturers is "an important consideration" for the administration's economic policy.

Mrleft8
03-03-2004, 07:28 AM
Considering the way fast food burgers are "built", it's not so surprising that our dim witted commander in cheese thinks of them as manufacturing jobs...

Figment
03-03-2004, 07:28 AM
Heard a quip on the radio:

Will Special Sauce now be classified as a commodity under "Durable Goods"??

Greg H
03-03-2004, 07:35 AM
The ketchup and mayonaise packets definetly would.

Greg H
03-03-2004, 07:36 AM
...and the kids running the computerized cash registers could be considered IT workers.

brad9798
03-03-2004, 10:36 AM
so, is it NOT manufacturing? Or, is it not the kind of manufacturing YOU think it should be?

Keith Wilson
03-03-2004, 11:40 AM
Oh, fer chrissake Brad, be reasonable. Merely because the current administration proposes it doesn’t mean it's divinely ordained; even their supporters must agree that they screw up occasionally. Restaurant work is service work, and if only to keep the statistics honest we shouldn't radically change the definition.

I will grant you that one cause (not the only one) of the decline in the number of manufacturing jobs is that many manufacturing companies who used to do almost everything themselves now contract with specialized firms to do lots of things; janitorial services, computer maintenance, automation equipment deign and build, building maintenance, that kind of thing. Some of the relocated jobs are no longer classified as "manufacturing", rather as "business services", even though the work hasn’t changed.

Bruce Hooke
03-03-2004, 11:40 AM
Originally posted by brad9798:
so, is it NOT manufacturing? Or, is it not the kind of manufacturing YOU think it should be?By most people's definitions it is NOT manufacturing. The relevant definitions of "manufacture" from The American Heritage Dictionary" are as follows:


1.a. To make or process (a raw material) into a finished product, esp. by means of large-scale industrial operation. b. To make or process (a product), esp. with the use of industrial machines... You could possibly stretch this definition to fit burger flipping if you ignore the "esp" parts. However, this would only make sense if there were a good reason to do so, but in this case it seems pretty clear that the only reason is to play with the numbers to make the situation look better than it is.

What it comes down to is that statistics are supposed to provide a useful picture of what is going on. Grouping high-paying, low-turnover, desirable jobs (which manufacturing jobs typically are) with low-wage, high-turnover jobs like burger flipping clearly just muddys the picture and hides what is really going on in our economy.

ljb5
03-03-2004, 11:47 AM
It doesn't matter if it is a manufacturing job or not.

It only matters that it be consistently defined and not re-defined to manipulate data.

Meerkat
03-03-2004, 12:49 PM
Gee, they missed a great idea: pregnent women as baby factories, with abortion as industrial sabotage! :D

What about prostitution - that's assembly line work isn't it? :D

Then, there's fudge packing, but maybe one shouldn't look too closely at that. :D

Begging on street corners seems to be a full time job for some people (a growth industry!).

brad9798
03-03-2004, 01:28 PM
Actually, flipping burgers is making a finished product from raw material ... classic assembly-line manufacturing as I see it.

'esp. by means of large scale ...' Well, it certainly is large-scale, enterprise-wide. There are 13,000 McDonalds in this country ... each employing at least 20 folks ... that is large-scale manufacturing.

Not making cars, or machines, but it is still manufacturing.

Can't argue with that ...

And, to finish addressing the dictionary definition, there are plenty of industrial machines in any fast-food restaurant.

Okay, okay, I am being a bit tongue-in-cheek here ... but it is a simple argument to support if someone wants to label them as manuf. jobs ...

Meerkat
03-03-2004, 01:33 PM
Shrubbie can't even win with this one: McDonald's is downsizing:
McDonald 's Cuts Supersize by Year-End (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=571&ncid=751&e=1&u=/nm/20040303/hl_nm/leisure_mcdonalds_dc)