Economist Stephen Rose, writing for The Atlantic this month, surveyed that same half-century period between 1947 and 2007. But instead of looking at people, he looked at prices. It's the same story. Rose reports that spending on items that could be manufactured or produced globally -- food/drink and clothing -- fell the most. But the categories with the largest employment gains in the graph above -- education and health care -- also saw the largest gains in consumer spending in the graph below. Whether spending followed our employment, or employment followed our spending, both have moved in the same direction -- away from appliances and food toward local specialized services.
There is more to prices than employment figures, of course. Productivity and technology matter. Scarcity matters. Demand matters. But labor is such an important cost that at the broadest level, it can appear almost determinative.
Across the economy we can see that items that require fewer and fewer American workers per completion (think: socks) get cheaper, while services that can't find similar ways to replace American workers (think: health care, education, government) don't get cheaper at all. In fact, they often get more expensive.Please read on at:http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/prices-are-people-a-short-history-of-working-and-spending-money/254459/
