Congress Ignores Middle-Class Service Sector | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary

Congress Ignores Middle-Class Service Sector | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary: "American factories can churn out all that stuff with fewer workers because the typical worker is so much more productive than in decades past. Workers today are better educated and armed with cutting-edge equipment, computing power and production methods that enable them to produce far more in an hour of work than their predecessors. Rising productivity is the essence of progress and the foundation of rising living standards.

Manufacturing does represent a smaller share of total employment and output than in decades past, but this is inevitable in an advanced economy. Every rich nation in the world has followed the same path. Manufacturing tends to peak as a share of the economy when per capita income reaches about $15,000. Beyond that, every nation can be said to be deindustrializing."

"Since the early 1990s, two-thirds of the net new jobs created have been in service sectors where the average pay is higher than in manufacturing."

"In 1900, 40 percent of American families earned their living on the farm. Today, fewer than 2 percent of Americans are employed in the agricultural sector. Yet we remain a global leader in agricultural production.

Despite the loss of millions of agricultural jobs in the past century, our fantastically more productive farms continue to produce record output. American farmers today produce twice as much milk as they did in 1900, more than three times as much pork, more than three times as many eggs, nearly four times as much wheat, more than four times as much beef, five times as much corn and eight times as much chicken as a century ago.

Soaring productivity in agriculture and manufacturing has made the goods produced in those sectors more affordable for all Americans. The relative decline of those sectors has freed workers and capital"