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The New Normal America: A Country Where Eating And Drinking Is The New Manufacturing
For a long time we have been seeking a chart that captures the pure essence of America's transition into its "new normal" mutant clone, in which record high stock markets coexist with record high foodstamp usage; in which record public debt amounts coexist with record low interest rates; in which the Fed is responsible for 20% of the US GDP but which is forgiven if it means the second coming of a housing bubble giving people the false hope of another "flip that house" get rich scheme. We believe we have found it.
On the chart below we show the number of US manufacturing workers over the past decade (currently at levels first seen in 1941) on one axis; and the number of bar and restaurant employees - currently at an all time high - on the other. For those asking, in the past year the US has added 366,700 "food service and drinking places" employees and a whopping... 41,000 manufacturing workers.
And that, in a nutshell is the new America: a nation in which more than ever eat out, in which almost nobody actually produces anything.
Source: BLS
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If you grow your own food and brew your own beer, then yes.
If you define "shit" as "manufactured output", then yes.
USSA WINS!!
If you are talking manure, friend, then we have almost reached the promised land....
Since 2000 -
Manufacturing - negative 5 million
Restaraunts - positive 2 million
So soon the 10.5 million servers (theoretically dependent on the producers to buy their food/drink and pay their tips) will outnumber the 12 million producers...makes perfect sense. Crisis over.
Yes, but think of the level of service we'll receive when the ratio is 1-to-1.
"More cracked pepper, sir?"...coming soon to an Arby's near you.
It doesn't matter- the manufacturing jobs aren't high paying anyway. factory line jobs in Foxconn / Apple in Shenzen pay less than an Applebees in Skaneateles. Oh, but the engineering jobs that accompany them?
Check out the salaries for Engineers in China and see if we have a prayer, unless you are a 'six sigma black' chemE http://www.gemini.com.hk/assets/doc/survey_china.pdf
I remember conversations in the late 80s about the US transitioning to a "service economy." And here we are. Happy? No? Wasn't everything you dreamed? Sorry.
Now, I also remember conversations in the late 90s about the US transitioning to an "information economy." We won't even have burgers to point at as the final product. The world will look exactlty the same from the outside, but somewhere a file in a computer will have a few bits twiddled differently.
We'll YEARN for the days when you could at least look at all the burgers you flipped in a day as evidence you accomplished something.
Remember all those Clinton administration idiots who swore that entering into free trade agreements with the third world would 'create millions of high tech export jobs for Americans'? Fast forward 20 years later and we're now feeling the effects of sending all real jobs overseas. The result: a nation of waiters and baristas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
Makes me nostalgic for those little charts that Ross Perot drew during the Campaign of 1996...remember him talking about that 'whishing sound' of jobs leaving the US? I don't think we even had the word, 'baristas' back then.
When I had a job at a Call Center (the worst job of my life), there was a young woman who had an infant that was nearing the age when he needed to be switched from baby food to 'real' food. She told me that she had fearful discussions with her husband about what they going to feed the baby since all they ate were frozen pizzas. My jaw hit the floor. Her words did explain the most awful case of acne I had ever seen on a grown woman. But to not realize that she could go to the library for a book on Child Nutrition or even google something about the subject...well, it was like someone had slapped me across the face and I realized what Willfully Ignorant people were living around me.
WTF has happened?
Ross Perot was kinda like Ron Paul in some ways: little old white guy with a high voice, ridiculed by the media, telling Americans harsh truths they didn't want to hear.
Actually, he referred to ' a huge sucking sound ' (hard to type that accent though) of American jobs going overseas.
Both parties called him a nutjob.
Kinda like what they say about Ron Paul.
Yup, we're fucked.
they were not "idiots" - they knew exactly what was to happen
Sir Jimmy Goldsmith told them
Somebody needs to serve this: http://player.vimeo.com/video/57126054#at=0
Last month was a new record of people who died because of diabetics in New York caused by obesity....
U S A U S A U S A U S A !!!!!!!
Natural selection....let'em go; live by the fork, die by the fork. I'm tired of paying insurance premiums that support the habits of these gluttonous, undisciplined swines that have no respect for themselves.
it's also spreading here in Europe. This weekend was a beautifull weather here in Belgium and in the city it was like... no more fit and skinny kids... majority is fat! no kidding!
My wife is 32 and has a 34 waist! girls of 18 have like a 38 these days! damn!
what's this world turning into!
The only good thing is that they have bigger tits but I'm a ass kind of guy. A woman's ass needs to be a nutcracker!
That's the 11th commandment!!!
Agreed, the fat woman cometh and taketh the nice ass away.
The diabetes epidemic is caused by artificial sweeteners.
The obesity doesn't help, but it is the obese that consume the most artificial sweeteners thinking it will help them lose weight.
Don't drink diet soda or use any artificial sweeteners, your body doesn't know what to do with them and it kills your pancreas.
Meanwhile modern wheat is even worse on your blood sugar. A slice of bread will spike you blood even more than tablespoon full of sugar.
www.wheatbellyblog.com
The FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld vow to "call in his markers," to get it approved. Which he did.
" The FDA had actually banned aspartame ..."
WHEN?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame
"Since December 1998, a widely circulated email hoax cited aspartame as the cause of numerous diseases"
Sorry 'boys'. More infotrash in your brains ...
Some unsweetened 'food' for thought, assuming you aren't a troll...
Donald Rumsfeld and the Strange History of Aspartame
How Aspartame Became Legal - The Timeline
Crap.
Cite something of SUBSTANCE.
And while you're at it, address the FACT that tha Aspartame was never BANNED.
You guys just make shit up!
It's on account of that great diet that they all enjoy in the public housing projects. No lie.
See, this is a true demonstration of just how far it's fallen. We do not make things anymore, meaning we are useless consumers of naught. Our main business is eating and drinking, followed by entertainment (video games, YouTubes, iStuff... whatever) and then of course, political discourse which is affirmation in the form of Foxes and MSNBSs as opposed to information transfer.
This folks, is a self fulfilling desrtuctive cycle.
It has nowhere to go but rot. Fast or slow, fun or painfully, it matters not.
We're being bled to death, mentally, physcially, spiritually, economically, the 1% is scouring the bowels of mankind for the last crumbs of treasure... No wonder the Georgia Guidestones suggest 500MM people. A couple 1,000 1%ers supported by half a million, a veritable handful of slaves.
There are no, nor have there ever been Conspiracy Theories. They, like myth and lore have merely been a means of transmitting the truths, the reality of history amongst those willing to listen in the face of limiting knowledge to the Official Priests reading the Latin Bible and the beholden nature of the current MSM. Never's changed a wit. Always the King's Criers informing the peons, managing perceptions.
There are no Conspiracy Theories, merely few understanding the World as it Truly Exists, excoriated and demeaned by those who wish the truth to remain hidden.
Welcome to Wakeup-Land.
All your faintest darkest and most rotten suspicions have been confirmed, officially.
Welcome to Orwell's 1984
Welcome to Hell on Earth, a direct violation of Natural Laws and the Rights of Man.
Welcome to a burdensome intrusion where people will begin walking about with hunched shoulders and glassy eyes, devoid of the entrepreneurial spirit, wards and slaves of the state.
And yes, I know it already, for I've seen it first hand behind the Iron Curtain as a young man... sadness, decay, apathy and rot become the centerpieces of the human spirit.
Think of how that miasma will play havoc with the real economy.
It will stagnate and moulder.
We are amongst evil, for no man should fear his public servants or a perversion of the rule of law.
God help us all, for we have proved we are incapable of helping ourselves.
I blame facebook.
Wonderful and true. Thank You. Tommorow will be a better day. People are waking up. (I hope.)
Welcome to a burdensome intrusion where people will begin walking about with hunched shoulders and glassy eyes, devoid of the entrepreneurial spirit, wards and slaves of the state.
A co-worker recently related to me the details of a train trip through the Czech Republic, circa 2006, that she and her husband took as part of their european honeymoon. As they were showing each other pictures on their smart-phones, sharing laughs about great memories, cracking jokes and enjoying life, she caught the empty, expressionless face of an old lady sitting across the aisle from her. She said the lady's eyes told the story of a life dictated by a powerful few - thinking for her, planning for her, and completely destroying her spirit, and ensuring that the older she got the less she would want the responsibilty that comes with freedom and the more she would fear it because she would be lost and incapable of surviving without the state.
You're absolutely right, Knuk. I see more and more of these hollow faces, lost in their own little world a bit more everyday here in Kalifornia, as anything that doesn't involve consumption is left up to the state.
The real tragedy is that we've done this voluntarily. We stuck in the IV and the drip is so slow we don't even notice the poison going into the bloodstream.
Thanks, MH....
I've been thinking about this more and more today, and am greatly saddened by those memories, exactly as you described, the old woman, vacant... saddened that her whole life was wasted on nothing for no reason. Asked to place all her fealty and trust in something which essentially drained her life energy.
Its terribly sad.
Indeed, I've teared up a bit thinking about it at times....
So destructive to the necessary human conditions.
So Evil....
There is indeed a life struggle between the forces of good and evil taking place, on a spiritual level.
It is terrifying...
I see all of the obese around me. I also note that there are no longer any sidewalks anymore. I have to drive to an area of town that has them so I can take a walk.
I also know that Food, Glorious Food can be one's best friend in these dark days of no employment, no fun, and no civility. People eat only to calm their nerves, lessen their loneliness, and to feel something good for a change.
It is easier to control one's heroin habit than one's overeating habit.
And when I read the results of the Pew Study where most stupid Americans don't care if their phone calls are intercepted by the NSA, all I want to do is head for the fridge and eat some ice cream.
Uncle Smart Meter will be watching.
Dude, chillax!
Brittany Spears is back and hotter than ever! She has been able to conquer her daemons and she could be the next replacement Kardashian!!!!
Wooot!
We can eat bonds. Along wit sausage they're very tasty.
Bonds can be used to fuel a car also, about 10000000 octanes
pan fried cicada wrapped in 10 year notes are deelish......lots of cicadas around our way........they are like flying shrimp...............now if i can only find a treasury bond around here somewhere........................crap, i think ben has them all.......................
Nothing has changed.Nail Salons,Bars,Pizza Joints,service shit sector.
Where else can you get that good feeling from treating people like dirt just like your rich/famous idols do???
Yes, and I know a number of young folks who are now coming to grips with the prospect of career baristas....
Debilitating it is....
Corrosive to the human condition.
Then add on top that Big Brother is Watching
Oh, this shit is gonna do wonders for the entrepreneurial spirit and economic well being of all mankind.
@10mm
Mmmm. If reading that doesn't make you hungry for a Loco Taco from Taco Hell, what will?
Sour dough burger from JACK IN THE BOX.YEAHHHH
you forgot lettuce pickers. Or is that now classified as a skilled trade?
Nope, that's still Manuel labor
Monday flat sets up a POMO rally Tuesday.
Bravo, so you bought the dip in prep for tomorrow's ramp right?
Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce;
All we ask is that you let us serve it your way...
We can serve your broiled beef Whopper
Anyway you think is proper; have it your way...
(Chorus) Have it your way, have it your way! At Burger King, eat at Burger King!
five easy pieces..........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtfNE4z6a8
That is one of my favorite scenes in cinema (porn excluded, of course).
TruthINSunshine,
You old mother fucker,i remember that shit.Oh wait,im the old fuck.
We need to bring back Arthur Treachers fish and chips
Don't forget the lemon pies!
Can you imagine when restaurants start installing 3-D printers at each of their tables...put the mayo in the tuna can...call Starkist....
Wow... Nice Bill Blazejowski reference.
Restaurants are already placing computers on the table. Customers place their own orders. A human brings you your order....but eventually, it will be a robot.
The 99% serving Grey Goose martinis and oysters Rockefeller to the 1%
Note: The Rockefeller reference is relevant and intentional.
My generation is rapidly becoming a nation of (badly dressed) butlers.
Years from now, many of my generation at the dinner table* will tell their children, "I remember that time I worked at Applebee's during the Obama Administration".
*That is, if in 20 years........they actually have a family, a roof over their head, a table with food to eat on it, and a good job to support all of this, by that time.
...and, teeth.
Ah, just think of those several dozen sitting in the assigned seats at your table in the dinning hall in the Camp as your extended family.
Somebody looses a tooth, somebody else will take it to make a small scrimshaw keepsake or needle, awl, tooth pick...
It will be like the good old days....
Just before you either starve, are worked to death or otherwise exterminated
But then again, if you're energetic and enterprising, you might become a Capo... lucky you! One of the Commandant's very own favorite special sexual delights!
And most importantly, are still alive to tell the tale, have someone that would want to actually listen to the tales, or have a diary that is not in the form of Facebook, Live Journal, etc.
Then again, if they did have a hard copy diary, that would assume that people are still able to read text like this, and not just the 140 character text, and that someone would actually want to read what was written.
My own grandparents told me many tales of the last depression, and my grandfather was a hobo himself, and told me stories of his travels in the Western US states. My other relatives never had the time to listen to the tales, or simply told me that he made them up.
When I went to the areas he talked about, I found a local historical society, and EVERYTHING he said was correct to the most minute detail, including the size of ranch he worked on, who lived there, and its location.
I got hard copies of all of this, and of course, my relatives would not even bother to look at it, and thought I was wasting my time going on a vacation out there.
Idiocracy is looking to be our future more and more.......
My father's tales of the Depression were interesting. He held a good job all through it, and put money in the bank. Bank called my parents down to "have a talk". Parents couldn't figure out what could possible be wrong. So, the banker said, "You've money in our bank, how would you like to own the 12 family apartment building you're in?" The bank had forclosed on the original owner and wanted to get rid of it. Gave them a great deal. Every few months same bank would ask them to come and look at another property they had. After the war they sold them all off and my father retired, fixed for life, at 48. It could happen again, couldn't it?
My grandmother's banker used to call her when she was overdrawn so she could skaddle into town and make a cash deposit.
She also fed all hobos who came to the house on her farm. At least her 5 kids didn't go hungry during the Depression, but they wore the same outfit to school all week long. I've been trying that....and I love not doing so much laundry!!! I live in the 'Heartland' where there is NO fashion...just obesity and diabetes....oh, and Willful Ignorance with lots of bible thumping.
We don't need to produce anymore. Bubble Bernanke and the Fed can just print out of thin air to by stuff from outside the US. As long as China and the rest of the fools keep accepting printed paper we wil just keep giving it to them.
The Fed can play it's accounting games and make trillions of debt disappear.
Other countries be the suckers and keep accepting the USD.
I'll gladly accept the USD but Uncle Ben never sends them to me. And I promise to buy new cars and things manufactured in the USA which will help the economy (after buying a sizeable stack of gold)...
I'm so broke I had to go to AA just to have enough money to eat..
cooking is a form of manufacturing, aren't McDonald's jobs counted as manufacturing since, after all, they do manufacture big macs no?
Yes:
From Feb, 11, 2009:
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-601336.html
I'd love to see the list of allowable hedonic adjustments...something like:
horse = cow
6oz = 4oz
fried breading = fried chicken
water = whiskey
hydrogenated soy oil = butter
liquid = solid
2 + 2 = 5
J.H.C. These delusional fucks.
Is the Big Mac secret sauce a chemical?
We produce debt!!! The US is the largest producer of debt!
everyone wants to be featured on diners drive ins and dives
Lovely, as I have said many times before; "Humanity isn't just another ponzi, it's the ponzi." Long lard-asses and soylent green...
Don't worry. We still manufacture money.
Yeah true and with the ever increasing amount hence those 41,000 jobs!
And all the people in these lucrative jobs have money to buy STOCKS! Their Golden Years look rosie (as in: in the red)
Within a few years, you will get a lapdance when ordering a Whopper.
well we do need someone to serve the cops and firemen at the pub......SPIT !
Peter Schiff had the best analogy on this: Imagine a desert island occupied by five castaways: four Asians and an American. Each islander has a job: the four Asians' job is to fish, forage, and hunt, and the American's job is to eat. At the end of the day the Asians all present their fish and vegetables for the American to consume. A Keynesian looks at the island's economy and says "The American is the key to the whole thing, because without him, none of the Asians would have jobs."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mH2DZOHJLA
Three shipwrecked guys on a little island with nothing but coconut trees and a bleak future.
Catholic says, "I'm going to cut some coconut trees to build us a shelter."
Protestant says, "Im going see if there is fresh water on the island".
Joo says, "I"m gonna open up a coconut store".
I would have guessed a coconut bank.
Some three card monty/coconut shell game later and he'll own the entire island.
Obama just nominated Jason Furman to be the head of the CEA (Council of Economic Advisers).
To know where employment health is headed, let's see this gem from Furman in 2006 in an email exchange on Salon about quality jobs and Wal-Mart:
Yeah, but, where am I going to get my weed from? This guy?
http://www.shockmansion.com/wp-content/myimages/2013/04/ShockMansion80.j...
It takes a lot to feed half tonne humans
this must mean that they pay and tips for food jobs is the same as salary and overtime for manufacuring jobs since they are each employing c. 10 million?
i wonder what the plot would like for sales of tool kits v pc's/notebooks/i-pads
Someone needs to invent a "robo bar tender" and a "cocktail waitress bot" to get these numbers back in line.
Waiting...
Beloved ZH..please do not bash the foodservice industry. It remains ultra competitive and an exemplar of what competition can bring to an economy. By and large, the people who work in the industry are hard working and honest.
They are not scam slip and fall attorneys, or arbitrage zero wealth profiteers, or public entitlement recipients. Think of where the largest percentage of small business owners are - foodservice.
This is an industry that still respects work (ie. output) and rewards its participants mostly by how skill fully they adapt to situations.
Nah..... they are mostly sad sack table servers who work for minimum wage because they do not have skills to do anything else.
Owners, chefs and professional waiters are of course a different story
RE
Which is why they get paid the least on average, have the least benefits, and have some of the highest turnover in all of industry.....and up to 35% of them are also illegal immigrants (and this number would be higher if a) more would come forward and b) since the job situation is so bad, that actual US Citizens are taking these jobs because there is nothing else available).
Srsly, this is America today: A fat unaccountable CEO or banker who sits on his ass, telling others what to do, while his assets and investments accrue cash (thx to the Fed Reserve) and produces nothing to society....... reaps more of a benefit than someone (waiter, cook) who actually works their ass off to serve people who will hold them accountable (either manager or customer).
The more you work = the less you get paid. Even if you work for yourself (but at least the payoff, if you stick with it, will eventually come. It won't under an employer in this "neo-feudal" economy).
Americans are slowly coming to this fact.....despite 30+ year of self-denial of its existence since Nixon took the US off of Bretton Woods.
S.T.F.U.
366,700 employees at bar and restaurants! Wow, I had no idea the US had so many actors and writers.
When does Ben send me my $3,000,000 so I can go out to eat and drink and support my fellow citizens?
I promise I'll tip at 20%.
C'mon Ben!
WOW a world of Crabby Patties and Sponge Bobs. I think I'll go kill myself now.
If consumers were really short of disposable income, wouldn't we see the failure of some of these still-busy restaurants and bars??
They're obviously still fat and sassy. We DESPERATELY need higher unemployment.
<<<<<If consumers were really short of disposable income, wouldn't we see the failure of some of these still-busy restaurants and bars??>>>>>
Not until the credit cards are cut off.
My sister-in-law is a good example.
She goes to Dunkin Donuts every morning and spends six or seven dollars on a coffee, bagel and donut.
Spends about ten bucks for lunch (including a diet soda)
Then for dinner it's another ten or twenty dollars for some more GMO laden crap food.
Every week she uses her debit card, when that runs out she uses her credit card. For the money she spends on take-out she could be driving around in a MB, (or buy a lot of silver, that's what I would do).
Can I get a shake with that?
Food has become a drug...Frito-Lay has spent a fortune crafting it's own Hawaiin Gold flavor coating for those tasteless genetically modified corn wafers they fry up in trans fats...selling drugs in lucrative...much more so than manufacturing toasters...
See it time and again...40's person loses thier job...they open a restuarant or buy a franchise...there are 5 SubWay Sub Shops within a mile of my house...craxy.
<img src=" http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4797037111938117&pid=1.7&w=239&h=188&c=7&..." width="288" height="192">
Gee, Americans are best at stuffing Olive Garden and soda in their holes? Who would've guessed? There might be hope for the economy yet, fat-ass scooters are another growth "industry".
On the bright side, the production of scooters could lift manufacturing.
But manufacturing things is such a dirty endeavor.
I bet all 41,000 manufacturing jobs are about making soda machines and restaurant appliances !!
Obamacare death machines. To be tries out first on para/quad, depressed vets. Followed by dementia elderly and convinced subnormals.
Special Camps, of course.
Zerohedge hates us for our freedums
In the words of Tyler:
"We're the middle children of history, man; no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't; and we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
Fightclub