Hamburger Flipping is Manufacturing?

Brace yourself for this one...

White House economists wonder whether hamburger flippers at fast-food restaurants should be considered manufacturers.

In the report last week, Bush's chief economic adviser N. Gregory Mankiw called the definition "somewhat blurry" and asked whether it should be changed. "When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?"

For an administration that has seen 2.6 million manufacturing jobs vanish since January 2001, raising the possibility of changing how manufacturing jobs are classified has provoked a sharp response, especially in an election year.

When Mankiw's remarks came out this week, Democrats had a field day. In Ohio, presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said: "If this president is going to tell middle-class factory workers that even though their job has disappeared, they can still have a good manufacturing job at $5.15 an hour at McDonald's, let him come to Ohio."

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