you seem to think that the economy can survive without manufacturing and technology. that we can have a workforce of public sector drones, those who work in sectors funded by government (education, health care, defense), and private sector employment only in service industries. everyone can be a teacher, or a salesman, or an insurance agent, an auto mechanic, real estate, financial services, retail sales, restaurant and food service, travel and leisure, media and publishing, etc. not that there is anything wrong with those jobs, they are just fine and we need as many of them as we can create. but we must have some kind of core economic engine that invents things, and builds high multiple manufactured goods.
what I am telling you is that the US will be a much different nation (if a nation at all) without technology and high tech manufacturing industries. the tax base will be grossly eroded, while at the same time demands on government for more services to replace what wokers can no longer pay for from their wages, will grow astronomically. we can't keep running trade and budget deficits forever. we've had a huge monetary and fiscal stimulus over the past several years - and still can barely hang onto 3% growth and job creation just above the 150,000 per month replacement cycle. with this much stimulus, we ought to be seeing a large increase in government reciepts, as occured under Reagan, to help grow us out of this deficit. where are they? the problem is, for every dollar we give in domestic stimulus, consumers send a good part of that offshore buying foreign goods, and corporations do the same with capital spending. how do we break that cycle?
your claim that the auto industry is suffering is, frankly, nuts. car sales are at record levels, foreign manufacturers build light trucks in Texas and Alabama now - in part due to the import tariff.
The auto industry vigorously opposed the steel tarriffs, and suffered from them, and laid off workers because of them. The fact that people kept buying cars is beside the point.
And technological advancements in most fields are still coming from America, even if code-writing is being sent overseas.
Much of America's wealth today comes from overseas investment by Americans. It comes back here, and it is used in turn to promote construction, and efficiency in the domestic manufacturing and mining and agriculture sectors, and to improve general quality of life in other fields such as health care and all the other lines of work you mention. We still do have a manufacturing base, because for some things we need it here. And we have enough of one to fight a major war if necessary.
As an aside, you must be happy about the recird high oil prices, because they are helping domestic drillers a lot. I don't think, though, that it means the nation is better off.