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I think many people haven't fully grasped the implications of our country's loss of high-tech jobs. It's no longer a matter of letting the Third World catch up; it's now an issue of how long it'll be until they leapfrog us. Not only will an entire generation of well-educated Americans fail to raise their real standard of living, the next generation of Americans will produce far fewer scientists and engineers than their counterparts in China and India. What will this mean over the coming decades? It's perfectly conceivable to me that by 2050, Mandarin will be the most widely-used language in the global scientific community. Ethnically homogeneous China will supplant us as the world's superpower, with a full range of knowledge, management and productive self-sufficiency - and a far stronger national identity. What will we be left with? If current trends continue, we'll look a lot like Latin America: a well-off elite immersed within the mush of an ever-declining middle class and ever-growing lower caste. Even the lawyers will eventually run out of deep pockets to pick.

...we'll look a lot like Latin America...

This seems like the ultimate result to me. It is really difficult to get people to understand this. They are under the impression that the high-tech layoffs are just html page designers. It just doesn't soak in that they are talking about the people who designed all of the high-tech goodies, including the areospace hardware. What is the incentive for getting into engineering these days?

Makes me think there really is a "global governance" plan. From what I read, the first objective is to interlock the economies of nations so that so single one can hoard high-tech military weapons. Other dependencies would then make disrupting global trade national suicide. The US must be a third world country so that it does not consume more than its fair share of world resources. Yep, I'd say the plan is moving along nicely.

It's no longer a matter of letting the Third World catch up; it's now an issue of how long it'll be until they leapfrog us.

That's quite wrong. Our competition in most fields is exclusively Asian -- from Eastern, South and South-East Asia. I don't see Africa or South America producing any serious competition. The Asian economies that were supposed to leapfrog us are way behind in terms of GDP per capita -- the US has the second highest GDP per capita at $33,000. Japan is way behind and the Europeans are even further behind. India and China's GDP per capita? Don't make me laugh. They know it themselves and have put conservative targets of 2020 to 2050 to reach developed nation status. That's only getting to being a 'developed' nation, forget about being serious competition to the US. the US was until recently the largest exporter of goods in the world. We got overtaken recently and NOT by China, NOT by India, NOT by Japan, but by Germany. That's right, GERMANY is taking away our manufacturing edge. We're still on top in exporting of services and our share in that is GROWING. Our GDP is GROWING. If this economic indicators are pointing UP, why is there so much of doom and gloom? It's just like people are getting so complacent in their jobs they want jobs for life -- well Japan showed us what that can lead to. Someone in an earlier post asked for a level playing field -- somethign like taxes, tariffs, union rules, eh?