Services versus Products
When was the last time you stopped at a restaurant to have a meal alone, with your family or friends? Why did you stop at a restaurant instead of going home and fixing a better and less expensive meal?
These two (2) simple questions might initially sound a little out of place but before we arrive to a premature conclusion lets see if we are able to answer them in a logical and objective way.
The first question is geared to put in context the second one. Depending on your economical situation and work schedule you might stop at a fast food restaurant (i.e., Burger King, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, etc) every day Monday through Friday. A few minutes after you arrive you are consuming a reasonable meal of your choice. If you are not in the mood for fast food then there are many other rather inexpensive restaurant chains (e.g., Applebee’s, Chili’s Grill & Bar, Perkins Restaurant and Bakery, T.G.I Friday’s, etc) that would cater to your taste buds and larger budget.
On weekends the Naive American might consider dining at establishments that offer higher quality meals, which typically are not associated with national chains. I will not bother providing you examples local to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul but a quick search on the World Wide Web (WWW) should provide one with many choices. Of course such choices are typically associated with higher process (in the range of $$$ to $$$$$).
Once you have answered the first question take the average cost per meal per person and perform the simple arithmetic to arrive to a cost per week and perhaps per month. It surely does add up!
No for the second question, instead of going out to a restaurant the Naive American could instead have prepared the meal at home. With so many food programs and now cable (or satellite) channels dedicated to food and wine, we must be learning by simple repetition to prepare simple meals. Programs on television flash the ingredients on the screen or they just mention them creating a problem to take notes. Not to worry because most recipes are typically posted on-line on the WWW. With a lithe experience one is able to substitute ingredients or just eliminate them. I personally enjoy cooking. Not sure if my interest came from watching the Food Network on cable (www.foodnetwork.com) or by watching may family (not only my mother) cook while growing up. If you go for complex and expensive menus the savings by cooking once or twice a year might not be there, but by preparing food in the simple to medium degree of complexity you would be pleasantly surprised with the savings and the new skill you would be developing.
The main reason most Naive Americans shy away from cooking is convenience and most important is because of disposable income. We do not wish to prepare a meal so we look for someone to provide us with the service and in return we will pay them not only for the cost of the ingredients (e.g., beef, chicken, fish, etc) and all the overhead (i.e., cooks and chefs, rent, electricity, waiters and waitresses, heating and air conditioning, taxes, etc) associated with a restaurant but we will contribute to the profits of the individuals that own the facility we chose to dine in. So what is wrong with this? Nothing is wrong but from an economical point of view, unless you live in a city that caters to foreign tourists, moneys were just recycled. This is considering we did not choose a foreign wine or ingredient. In such case some small amount of money was shipped out of the US.
Now lets switchgears to many other service jobs in our country performed by Naive Americans. When you go to a store typically there is a staff of people that provides advice on what you should purchase and then sell it to you. The advice might be provided at the store or most typically comes in the form of commercials on television, the WWW or billboards. I believe we call this advertisement. When you are ready to pay then there is another set of employees that collect your money in the form of cash or plastic. We have just been exposed to a set of different services that culminated on the purchase of a product. As far as the services is concerned they are pure overhead (similar to the one provided by restaurants), which culminated in the exchange of Dollars for a product. If the product was designed and manufactured outside the US (OUS) then we just recycled some money and the rest went to a different country.
Finally we can look at other professions in our country that are service oriented, which we typically do not see them as such. We have accountants, bankers, business administrators, lawyers, physical therapists, professional athletes, marketers, financiers, sales people (we already discussed them) the list goes on and on. Our society needs to have Naive Americans in such professions (not so sure about lawyers; just kidding, one of my son’s wife is an attorney) but at this point in time we have too many of them (about 80% of jobs in the US are services) and as you can easily extrapolate services do not contribute to a healthy economy. Yes, I recall “career politicians” for the past few decades stating that engineering, science and manufacturing jobs can be replaced by liberal arts based ones providing services. Who in their right mind would make such statements and who would believe them? Well the Naive Americans did and this is one of the reasons today we are in the economical situation we are.
Let me tell you an experience that I had a few years ago. As I mention above I live in the State of Minnesota. Our governor Tim Pawlenty (R) started his “political career” as a City Council member in the city of Eagan, a suburb of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. My wife and my two (2) children lived in Eagan, MN for over fifteen (15) years. When I found out that Governor Pawlenty was heading a delegation to Canada seeking for business opportunities for people in biogenetics I decided to join. I am in the business of designing and developing storage systems that are used in the medical field. To get to the point of this example, I attended a session in which a description, of at the time, emerging biotechnology was presented by Canadian government officials. Governor Pawlenty stated that we in Minnesota have a large number of educated individuals as compared to other states in the US. A member of the Canadian government asked for the type of training most our citizens have. Pawlenty stated that liberal arts degrees were the most popular. The response from the Canadian official was quite revealing, that they would be more interested in people with scientific and engineering backgrounds.
It appears that Biology, Engineering, Mathematics, Science and Manufacturing are more desirable (at least in Canada) than services typically provided by Naive Americans with liberal arts degrees. A few years have gone by and in Minnesota nothing has changed to improve on the educational or business ratio to favor the more rewarding but at the same time harder educational paths and businesses.
Perhaps it is time for the Naive American that loves so much his way of life, to induce positive and lasting changes before they are just memories.
