Bush is trying to get burger flipping classified as "heavy manufacturing" to cover up job losses in that sector. Should burger-flipping be a heavy industry? David Cay Johnston NYT Saturday, February 21, 2004 U.S. report seeks label for fast-food jobs Is cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat, lettuce and ketchup inside a bun a manufacturing job, like assembling automobiles? That question is posed in the new Economic Report of the President, a thick annual compendium of observations and statistics on the health of the U.S. economy. The latest edition, which was sent to Congress last week, questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or should instead be reclassified as manufacturers. No answers were offered. N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, which compiled the report, did not respond Thursday to a request for an interview. The White House press office also had no comment. Putting jobs at McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food enterprises in the same category as those at industrial companies like General Motors and Eastman Kodak might seem like a stretch, akin to classifying ketchup in school lunches as a vegetable, as was briefly the case in a 1981 federal regulatory proposal. But the presidential report points out that the current system for classifying jobs "is not straightforward." The White House considered this section of the report to be important enough to have a box drawn around it so that it would stand out among the report's 417 pages of dry statistical tables and text. "When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" the report asks. "Sometimes, seemingly subtle differences can determine whether an industry is classified as manufacturing. For example, mixing water and concentrate to produce soft drinks is classified as manufacturing. However, if that activity is performed at a snack bar, it is considered a service." The report notes that the Census Bureau's North American Industry Classification System defines manufacturing as covering enterprises that are "engaged in the mechanical, physical or chemical transformation of materials, substances or components into new products." Classifications matter, the report says, because among other things, they can affect which businesses receive tax relief. "Suppose it was decided to offer tax relief to manufacturing firms," the report said. "Because the manufacturing category is not well defined, firms would have an incentive to characterize themselves as in manufacturing. Administering the tax relief could be difficult, and the tax relief may not extend to the companies for which it was enacted." David Huether, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, said that he had heard for several years that some economists wanted to count hamburger flipping as a manufacturing job, which he noted would result in statistical reports showing many more jobs in what has been a declining sector of the economy. "The question is: If you heat the hamburger up are you chemically transforming it?" Huether said. His answer? No. The New York Times Article
Well, not the regular burgers, but those big 1/4 pound patties can be pretty labor intensive... Let's not even get into working the deep fryer...You ever had to lift baskets of fries all day long?
Burger-flipping isn't, but hauling the loads of **** that this administration keeps coming up with is.
