Daily Speculations

Hard Labor: A Play by Philip McDonnell

In response to those who fear the loss of manufacturing jobs, the Old Speculators Association's Philip J. McDonnell has written a two-act play:

ACT I. The year is 1903.  A boyish looking Vic is presiding over an urgently called meeting of the Old Speculators' Association of Natural Philosophers at the Brighton Beach Hotel. The group has convened to address the critical economic issue of the loss of farm jobs and the disturbing migration to the city with its lucrative manufacturing jobs.

Spec 1:  No economy in history has ever survived with less than 90% of its labor force working the land.  The land is the foundation of capitalism.  It has always been so.  If current trends continue less than 50% of our workforce will be on the farms.  Who will produce the food?  We shall all starve.

Spec 2:  I'm an optimist.  Somehow capitalism will find a way.  Workers are leaving to pursue better economic opportunities.  If each one is better off then I'm satisfied that we are all better off in the aggregate.  It may be that the smaller number of workers still on the land may be able to produce more due to innovation and this new fangled economic concept called productivity.

Spec 1:  Don't give me that productivity folderol.  That's as phony as a wooden nickel.  The only solid foundation for an economy is good hard labor on the land.  That's the foundation of all mercantile success.  In addition all these so called manufacturing jobs in the cities are worthless.  The cities are crowded, unhealthy and the jobs are dreary and monotonous.  We should ban all improvements in technology and put a stop to this nonsense now!

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ACT II - We fast-forward to the year 2003. The percentage of farm workers has plummeted to 2% of the total workforce. Productivity has increased to the point where those workers are producing enough for the US and substantial exports to the world. Vic is now chairing an email discussion group which is feverishly debating the loss of manufacturing jobs.

Spec 3: The US is losing manufacturing jobs to other less developed countries. We are not creating domestic jobs at all. What recovery, this is a jobless recovery. Some companies in the US are even moving high-tech jobs abroad. Without job creation the recovery will lose steam due to lack of consumer demand. If productivity keeps rising eventually only one person will have a job. The rest of us will be unemployed.

Spec 4: The employment rate is a lagging indicator. It has no predictive value for Specs. The jobs we are creating are high value tech and finance jobs. The jobs we are losing are low value manufacturing work. The people who have jobs are producing more because of better management, technology, communication and access to information. Computers and the Internet are huge driving forces in the beneficial change. Free world wide email and the Internet is also allowing US based companies to more easily manage foreign outsourcing. Would anyone seriously suggest we put the Internet genie back in the bottle even if we could?

Phil McDonnell: Why can't we just outlaw tractors, hybrids crops, hi-tech fertilizers, pesticides and farm mechanization? Then we could all work a hoe and pitchfork on a farm somewhere.

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Daily Speculations is grateful that Mr. McDonnell has mercifully spared us Act III, in which the Daily Speculations hosts and their friends reach back 15,000 years in human history to learn Stone Age advances in crop cultivation.

October 2003