In 2009, the private sector is estimated to constitute 55.3% of the economy, with federal government activity accounting for 24.1% and state and local government activity (including federal transfers) the remaining 20.6%. The economy is postindustrial, with the service sector contributing 67.8% of GDP.... While agriculture accounts for just under 1% of GDP, the United States is the world's top producer of corn and soybeans....
In 2005, 155 million persons were employed with earnings, of whom 80% had full-time jobs. The majority, 79%, were employed in the service sector.
First of all, to have 45% of the economy coming from the government, at a time when state and federal budgets are a mess, does not bode well. State employees are dropping like flies.
Secondly, having more than 2/3 of your economy in the "service" sector does not bode well, either. Wikipedia describes the "service sector" this way:
The service sector consists of the "soft" parts of the economy such as insurance, government, tourism, banking, retail, education, and social services. In soft-sector employment, people use time to deploy knowledge assets, collaboration assets, and process-engagement to create productivity (effectiveness), performance improvement potential (potential) and sustainability. The tertiary sector is the most common workplace.
Typically the output of this sector is content (information), service, attention, advice, experiences, and/or discussion (also known as "intangible goods").
Deploying collaboration assets? Engaging in process-engagement?
I am strongly reminded of when my husband was subjected to days of meetings with outside "consultants" who insisted on being called "sherpas" [I kid you not] and were there to infantilize everyone and pat them on their little heads and whine about teamwork. I am surprised he got out of there without singing kumbaya. This is one example of "intangible goods," which in this case was a euphemism for "useless crap" and "an utter waste of time."
To be fair, the utility of the service sector to the nation as a whole is to improve productivity, and I am sure it accomplishes that in many cases. But you can only improve productivity when there is actual production going on. I can see that education and social assistance can improve the productivity of individuals, but only if -- later on, down the line -- they will actually be engaged in producing something. I can see that banks are useful to communities when they provide funding for local businesses, but only when those businesses actually produce something. I can see that cooking food for someone or hemming their pants can save them time, but the rest of society only sees that as beneficial if that person engages in productive work in the time saved. How can we have 2/3 of the economy involved in improving productivity when only 1/3 of the economy is production? Isn't that a bit like having 2 efficiency experts per factory worker?
Ah-- but I'm looking at the proportion of GDP, which is measuring the service sector in terms of dollars. More interestingly, 79% of all workers are in the service sector. So it's more like having 4 efficiency experts per factory worker. This is hardly sustainable.
And can I say, I am shocked that only 1% of GDP involves growing or raising food? (Livestock is included in the agriculture sector; it doesn't only mean crops.) Food seems... well, a little bit important to human existence, no? And can I also point out that soybeans are not actually edible unless fermented and that we are poisoning ourselves with all these damned soybeans? If you take out soybeans, actual food production is even less than 1% of GDP, which I find insane.
No, I don't think we will return to a subsistence level where all we need is food, shelter, and clothing. But we do need to think in terms of the basics. We need to know where our food, shelter, and clothing will come from if the currency fails. Sitting around selling each other data and advice does not make an economy. You can't feed the poor with databases, and if you don't feed the poor, they revolt.
As I said in my previous post, collective national wealth is pretty blue-collar. It's the blue-collar workers who built the roads, bridges, dams, subways, and buildings. It's the small, local farmers who we will again have to rely on, when centralized and industrialized agriculture fails in the absence of cheap fuel and cheap money. To have 4 out of 5 workers in the "soft" (that is, mostly non-producing) economy is unsustainable when heading into an economic depression. What on earth will we do with all the unemployed?
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