[quote=SK in CV][quote=briansd1]
If we don’t find something else to manufacture that we, or the rest of the world wants, we’re in deep trouble. (Alternative energy and related technologies???)[/quote]

I think we have reached a tipping point with manufacturing. In the past, our high salaries, compared to the Chinese, were balanced by our infrastructure, education, available capital, system of allocating capital, and legal system.

Those advantages are now gone.

They have been building infrastructure like mad and ours has been rotting. Our suppliers are leaving so where once it was easier to be here, now it is harder.

They have matched our level of education in a single generation. Not for the entire population but the top 200 million can go head to head with us. I think the one child policy had a big impact here. The Chinese invest in their children and those investments were focused on just one.

Our government is busy borrowing all of our capital and taxing the rest.

Our legal system has become a burden and government unreliable (think Chrysler bond holders).

Our one remaining big advantage is possession of the worlds reserve currency but we seem to be trying to blow that as fast as we can.

Even though we no longer have an added value, our labor is still priced at 20x.

If you were going to build a factory to produce something that can be shipped in a container, why would would you build it here?

Our manufacturing base is disappearing at an incredible rate and the jobs that go are never coming back.