Lead, follow, etc.

Most of us don't read or dwell on statistics released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Generally we listen to commentators on national media to impart their conventional wisdom about how good or bad things are going in the USofA. Well the conventional wisdom is that the manufacturing sector has died and all of "our" jobs are being exported overseas. Obviously that is a bad thing and it lays to the unions and our politicians to fix the problem.

Well it is true; employment in the manufacturing segment of our economy is trending down. According to the BLS manufacturing employment is now at the lowest level (11,648,000 jobs in November 2009) since March 1941. That is coming off a high of 19.5 million jobs in 1979. Almost 6 million manufacturing jobs have been eliminated since the year 2000. Grim news indeed, especially if you are one of the worker-bees that used to be employed on the assembly line.

A similar thing has happened all around us down home here in the agriculture sector. Yet we have survived just fine and are pressing on with life. In 1790, farmers were 90 percent of the U.S. labor force. By 1900, only about 41 percent of our labor force was employed in agriculture. By 2008, less than 3 percent of Americans were employed in agriculture. Yet technological advances and machinery have made our farmers the world's most productive. It has been stated that our farmers of today are so productive that if needed, they could feed the entire world.

I am one of those laborers who have been displaced from agriculture. I simply changed jobs when my farming habit took more money than my Air Force retirement provided! Yet all available farm ground today is still owned and being farmed or set aside in programs to establish wildlife habitat while awaiting future need for production. Cities in the rural sector, like McCook, are hanging on just fine.

A similar thing has happened in the manufacturing segment of our society. According to the Federal Reserve, the dollar value of U.S. manufacturing output in November, of last year, was $2.72 trillion (in 2000 dollars). Today's manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220. Output per worker is three times as high as it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990.

The Ag sector made the change without the help of labor unions and trade sanctions -- both favorite tools for political meddling. Every time the government stepped in with some edict on how to manage a farm the farmers, resilient tough citizens that they are, individually found a way to circumvent the correction or at least make it work for them.

The workers in manufacturing didn't have the luxury of making decisions for themselves as they gave up that responsibility to big union. Large abandoned sections of Detroit and East Saint Louis testify to the fact that laborers simply priced themselves out of their jobs. Manufacturing capital turned to technological advances and machinery to enable the efficiencies needed to eliminate overpriced workers.

The manufacturing segment will have a longer time accepting the inevitable evolution to more efficient work force than did we in Ag. For politicians there is way too much opportunity to curry favor from unions by pushing for trade sanctions, indefinite extensions of unemployment benefits and a hundred other ways to spend tax money to buy votes. So it will take longer to make the adjustment, but the adjustment will come. I have undying faith that Americans are innovative and resilient enough to prevent elected but non-listening politicians from ruining our future.

Where will all those displaced manufacturing workers go for jobs? I have no clue, but neither do our politicians. The pols could help, though, by stopping unneeded spending, quit meddling in the health industry, and keep their fingers out of a thousand other places where they have not the knowledge to lead. Cutting taxes now and unburdening our future with debt would encourage small business to prosper. When business expands the unemployed will find their needed jobs.

There is an old military adage that dictates: "Lead, follow or get out of the way." Obviously we have few in Congress smart enough to lead. Unfortunately most are reluctant to follow, at least follow what their electorate think is best, so we must simply vote them "out of the way."

That is the way I saw it.