Race, it's not hard to see. Of course it is no fun to see our previously high-wage jobs made obsolete. But the fact of the matter is that they ARE obsolete. Either we figure out how to compete with the rest of the world or we will die. I for one think that we can.
While we can whine about losing our high paying job, the problem is that we are losing the ability to produce!!
The machines necessary to make things are moving to China!! The replacement costs of new machines is prohibitive unless you have a market for it, only if you cannot make it cheaper than a slave can, you have no market!!
What product am I going to make that cannot be reverse engineered by a geek with a set of verniers and a tape measure and calipers and shadowgraph?? Even if I did design somehting unique, since we handed the technology of machine tools and the methods to produce to these slave labor countries, my new product will only exist in competitive form in this country for no more than 3 years. Once it makes it overseas, and is recognized as a commodity that grreedy westerners will buy, it will be copied and mass produced for pennies on the dollar, and we GAVE THEM the means to do so!! They didnt develop it!! They didnt design it!! They didnt spend the money necessary to finalize the design or methods, they just copied what they saw or outright bought the machines that the originating company used to make this product!!
Goodness! People are so stupid!! We are handing away the store on this stuff, the technology we are giving away is not just intellectual, it is a the physical machines we used to make widgets, buttons, fabrics, filters, oils, sheet metal, (did you know that? Even the simple sheet metal bending industries are losing work to China?? The simple press brake is going to disappear because a SLAVE can learn how to bend metal just as well!!)
This is why I scream at this: Most people who are the free trade cheerleaders must have never worked in manufacturing in their life. They have no clue as to what is happening to us!!