[AreaMan]

Historians have lamented the plight of the hand-loom weavers after power looms began replacing them in England. But how could the poor have been able to afford to buy adequate new clothing unless the price was brought down to their income level by mass production machinery?

What is happening today is not that an efficient process is replacing an in-efficient one, it is that the already efficient process is being sent to a country where the labor and regulatory costs are a fraction of the U.S.'s.

Our Hand-Loom Weavers are being replaced by a Chinese/Indian/Philipino equivalent.

[Joe Bonforte]

Our Hand-Loom Weavers are being replaced by a Chinese/Indian/Philipino equivalent.

Good. That way our educated, productive workers can do something more beneficial to the economy.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it really is good for us to export those jobs. Both sides come out ahead, us and them, in the aggregate (though some individuals are obviously harmed). Read a treatise on Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage for more details.

[CobaltBlue]

I am old enough to remember when all the textile mill jobs moved from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt. Same arguments made then, fell on just as deaf ears.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work in a textile mill.

I saw something truly ironic on TV the other day - factories in Taiwan (!) complaining about losing their jobs to mainland China.