Assuming that the tail part of your manufactured spending process isn't trivially infinitely scalable at whatever time and money cost that part of the process incurs, it then matters if manufacturing spending results in 4x bonus points per dollar spent (as with office supply store purchases of Visa/MC gift cards with 5x total points using Chase Ink variant) versus only 0.5x bonus points per dollar spent (as with Freedom 1.5x total points anywhere). I prefer more total points earned per thousand dollars fed through this process for the same time/money cost of the tail part of my manufactured spending process.