Dorganonomics

“America cannot be great if most of its workers are in the service sector or cashiering at Wal-Mart,” Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) declares in his book "Take This Job and Ship It," who also has an anti-trade letter in today's WSJ where he says: "There is a growing public sense that blind support for unfettered "free trade" in Washington has cost our country dearly."

From a review by Cato Institute's Daniel Griswold: "Most Americans do work in the service sector — about 80%, in fact — and most of those jobs pay much better than a retail cashier. In fact, the American middle class is built on good paying service jobs. Knock on the doors of any middle-class neighborhood and you will meet teachers, insurance agents, engineers, managers, bookkeepers, firefighters, police officers, small-business owners, and truck drivers.

As a nation grows wealthier, the share of the workforce in agriculture invariably falls and the share in the service sector rises. The share in manufacturing typically rises and then falls. According to the World Bank, countries with the lowest share of the work force in the service sector include Uganda, Vietnam, Romania, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Mongolia. Countries with the highest share in the service sector include, along with the United States, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, and Luxembourg. The first group is among the poorest nations, the second among the richest. Apparently one goal of Dorganomics would be to shift America from the rich group to the poor group."