[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Please don't take this personally, but I find your argument childish and wrong-headed. If there were no trucks to deliver manufactured goods they would pretty much worthless, but trucker driving is classed as "service", while the person to takes the goods from packaging to the loading dock is classed as "manufacturing". In a complex economy, labor produces a variety of outputs. A person cooking a meal is actually "manufacturing", then is the waitress "service" or like the guy who moves stuff from the assembly line to the loading dock, "manufacturing".

[AndyTheBear]

Snopercod, Lonesome:

I feel compelled to take Lonesome's side on this. I would even assert that a transition from tangible manufacturing jobs to service jobs while actual is a positive symptom of a wealthy well developed economy.

To borrow an example I once heard:

Suppose you have ten people living on an island who must spend all their time fishing with hook and line so they can have enough to eat.

One day someone on the island invents a fishing net, allowing him to catch enough fish for everyone.

Unfortunately this results in the loss of 90% of jobs on the island.

But, eventually the people on the island find other things they can do to make life better--some of them in more service orientated rolls, such as cooking the fish.

[snopercod]

All jobs done well are worthy. I myself have dug ditches for a living, as well as set up by those big glass windows with a headset on my head as I helped launch space shuttles. Hard physical work doesn't scare me, but I prefer using my brain, not my back.

Unfortunately, engineering and technical jobs are becoming scarce in America, which is my entire point on this thread.

Truckers, lawyers, accountants and waitresses (e.g. service people) are all worthy people, but they didn't build America - they supported those who did: The engineers, scientists, technicians, and mill workers.

I stand by my biased position.