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“We didn’t start from scratch in either world war. We had our industrial infrastructure in place.”

Um, we have a much a bigger industrial infrastructure in place now. Or have you been duped by reports of outsourcing, the vanishing blue collar class, “the death of the middle class,” etc.? Is it really possible to believe we can build less, that our technology is any less advanced, that our capital has somehow shrunk since nearly a century ago. However bad was the recent recession and however anemic is the so-called recovery the WWII buildup took place amidst the freaking Great Depression! Do you honestly think we’d produce less now?

Yes, it’s true that China, for instance, employs more people in manufacturing and that less of our consumer products than before are made overseas. But if you knew anything about how economies expand, you’d know proper capital formation means more efficiency and less workers. If you knew anything about comparative advantage you’d know it’s in our interest to let other nations do what they do, even if they do it worse than we do, and focus on other, higher things.

The truth remains: the U.S. is more productive than it’s ever been. You may not notice if all you pay attention to is abandoned factories with tumbleweeds in the parking lots on the nightly news. But we make stuff.

Nice rhetorical reply. Funny you can’t provide a single example and our stores continue to be swamped with items labeled “Made In China”, we still have counterfeit Chinese chips in our military equipment, and we still buy Airbus refuelers and Eurocopters while canceling domestic orders from Boeing—and our steel gets sold to us by Russia and China while I look at the skeleton of the former Bethlehem Steel, ad nauseam. Your puffery rapidly fizzles into “we make stuff” . . . sorry, but until I’m surrounded by “Made In USA” labels in the stores and we don’t have reports of almost half the families in the country receiving some kind of government assistance, never mind our public debt shrinking instead of inexorably growing, or having our domestic companies being bought lock, stock and barrel by alien firms, until we lend to China and get them to do what we tell them instead of vice versa, I will remain firmly convinced of my current point of view.

>> “But we make stuff” <<

.
What?

We couldn’t even make the steel members for the new SF Bay bridge that’s under construction.

Or the cars for BART, or the solar panels for Obama’s ‘green’ energy.

Whistle on by the graveyard.

In 2010, China manufactured $1.922 Trillion worth of goods with 120 million workers.

In 2010, the USA manufactured $1.855 Trillion worth of goods with 11.5 million workers.

The USA manufactures things like locomotives, ships, gas turbines, automobiles, aircraft, missiles, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

China manufactures cheap household items and stuff at Walmart.