What the hell is the service sector?

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


I produce knowledge (Right now) and am not in the service sector.

JM

Posting at poly is producing knowledge ?

[Dis]

prostitutes.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


I produce knowledge (Right now) and am not in the service sector.

JM

You are in the quaternary sector.

[Dinner]

According to wiki cooks are in the 3rd level of industry and are considered service sector employees.

[Proteus_MST]

What the hell is the service sector?

The hell would probably be a service sector too.

The devils and demons provide pain, despair and large amounts of heat for their customers

[Archbob]

Its basically anything that is not manufacturing more or less. We have low-wage countries do that for us. But we like can't outsource waiters and hairdressers, unless you want to drive to Mexico every time you get your hair done.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Dis
prostitutes.

The only segment of the service sector with 100% customer satisfaction.

[onodera]

Oh, another question arose.
How can most services produce GDP if they don't produce anything?
For example, advertising. You spend a lot of money to produce a, say, infomercial, and you spend some more to air it. Then you get money to cover the expenses from the company that *manufactures* the thingamabob. If your infomercial is good, the manufacturing sector should grow, and service sector just took money from the manufacturing sector and didn't produce anything tangible.

[Dinner]

Most services redistribute existing wealth rather then create it.

There are some exceptions. An engineer designs a building which, once built, is a physical item which people can get use out of.

[Dauphin]

Some service sectors create value by increasing efficiency. Consider how companies would operate if they had no accounting function, for example. After a short period of rejoicing you'd quickly find many would have problems that would cause them to fail.

Similarly, remove the financial markets and you'd have a massive credit crunch problem.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Dis
prostitutes.

Classic Dis.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by onodera
Oh, another question arose.
How can most services produce GDP if they don't produce anything?

They produce value, that value being equal to what they were sold for.

The division of things we consume into goods (those you can touch) and services (those you can't touch) is often useful, but also often confusing.

The two aren't that different, you can say that everything is a service. When a miner brings you coal, you're paying him for the service of taking it from underground and bringing it to you, you're not actually paying for coal itself. There is no difference in concept between paying for something you can carry away and paying the hairdresser to shave your butt.

Many people intuitively think that tangibles are worth more, but from the perspective of national accounts, it's all the same. Advertising services count towards GDP the same as mining services. If miners can increase GDP by selling more coal, so can advertisers by selling more ads.

[onodera]

Originally posted by VetLegion
They produce value, that value being equal to what they were sold for.

The division of things we consume into goods (those you can touch) and services (those you can't touch) is often useful, but also often confusing.

Oh, so the GDP doesn't measure production, it measures consumption. This makes things more clear.

Originally posted by VetLegion The two aren't that different, you can say that everything is a service. When a miner brings you coal, you're paying him for the service of taking it from underground and bringing it to you, you're not actually paying for coal itself. There is no difference in concept between paying for something you can carry away and paying the hairdresser to shave your butt.

I don't need no stinking hairdresser to shave anything.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by aneeshm
The only segment of the service sector with 100% customer satisfaction.

How do you figure?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by onodera
Oh, so the GDP doesn't measure production, it measures consumption. This makes things more clear.

No. It measures production. It's just that tangible things aren't the only things producible - and for both tangibles and intangibles, we measure the value of the stuff produced by how much people pay for it.