"Are you REALLY suggesting that all of those "blue-collar" workers who sent their kids to college to enable those kids to get "white-collar" jobs were WRONG?
If so, I gather you don't have much faith in the American Dream."
Except most of those blue-collar workers, when they were imagining the white-collar jobs their kids would be in, were probably seeing management and engineering positions for UNITED STATES BASED MANUFACTURING PLANTS! And the American dream isn't worth much if it ends up under the treads of a foreign power's tanks.
"And would you please state just how many new battleships it will take to keep every single drugged-up loser from detonating himself on a commuter bus?"
I see you're another one that's so blinded by the business aspect of everything, as well as a fixation on terrorism as the only physical threat, that you don't see the rapidly growing threat China poses to this country. With every passing year the military technological and personnel-skill gap between China and USA closes by two years (with 90-95% of that gap-closure due to free-trader technology & funding investments). You may think that mass warfare will never re-occur, but the Chinese are smart enough to know that it can and will. And their first order of business is to make sure free-traders like you do half the job for them by undermining their opponent's industry before warfare ever starts.
The Chinese are nothing if not smart and cognizant of the lessons of history (since they have thousands of years of it). They learned the lessons of the Second War. They suffered terrible causalities at the hands of an enemy who was unafraid to wage mass warfare. But they also learned that the very same enemy who inflicted such pain on them came ultimately to grief because they were unable to sustain a prolonged war against an industrial power with an established industrial base that could be shifted to a wartime production basis reasonably quickly.
The Chinese know enough not to make that mistake. If they ever do engage in a prolonged shooting war they will do so with a robust industrial base. It is ironic that this country with it's so-called "free trade" worshippers will have in large part enabled that.
I still think they would rather win the war without fighting it (i.e., economic warfare), but if we make any kind of military countermove (like vigorously defending Taiwan), we're going to receive it. A nation of burger flippers and lawyers filing lawsuits won't cut it against overwhelming air and ground forces.
Hey, ya gotta admit that your first point was a "stretch"...
Didn't "blue collar" parents also hope that their college-educated progeny would become doctors, dentists, ministers, teachers, architects, accountants, bankers, lawyers, stock-brokers, real estate moguls, scientists and civil engineers?
And, as you probably know, America has nothing like Germany's public "vocational schools", which combine hands-on apprenticeship programs with classwork to create highly-skilled manufacturing workers, who have NOT gone to college.
IMHO, the saying, "If you plant potatoes, you get potatoes" applies equally well to the vocational training we choose to provide our youth. Or do you think that sophomore (ic?) classes in "Gender Awareness" are good preparation for operating a high frequency induction furnace in a steel mill?
A separate, but significant issue, involves the high real estate and inventory taxes imposed on American industry by revenue-hungry politicians. It seems they have (conveniently) forgotten the tale of "The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs". And forgotten that industry CAN vote. Industry "votes with its feet".
IMHO, your second point (which I will over-simplify as "We can't defeat China without battle-ships!)" overlooks the fact that we are engaged in a sort of "cold war" with China right NOW.
One of our "campaigns" in the current "war" is to integrate China so deeply into the global economy, that China's leaders will come to realize that a "hot, shooting war" would be suicidal for their economy and, therefore, for any hope of victory.
Another subtle "campaign" is our use of the rising prosperity and education of the Chinese people, first as a counter-balance to the isolationism of the Chinese military, and second as a angry force to overthrow the corrupt governing elite -- in time.
It's been said that the Normandy Invasion would not have succeeded if Hitler had A-bombs. Not only does the US have plenty of such weapons, but they are already "on station" in waters surrounding China. Therefore, China's rulers have to consider whether the process of assembling an invasion army (which our satellites would plainly SEE), might create an irresistable "target of opportunity"...
I hope that explains why I am less inclined to panic over China's "threat" than you seem to be.
Have a nice weekend...