[LowCountryJoe]

It really depends on how you define an "economic boost." It's easy to focus on specific statistics or indicators and find a crisis at any given time, but let's step back and look at the big picture here. Can you think of any measure by which the standard of living in the U.S. has declined since the end of Reagan's second term in 1988?

Obviously by the time I checked there were no replies, just crickets! Why is that?

[Alberta's Child]

That's right. One of the sober realities of the world is that a solid manufacturing base requires two things: 1) a standard of living that is consistently lower than that of its trading partners, and/or 2) a wide variance in the standards of living among its citizenry, so that those with a lower standard of living can manufacture things to be sold to those with a higher standard of living.

Scenario #2 began to disappear under FDR's New Deal -- when the U.S. started getting an internal "level playing field" that took away the economic advantages associated with manufacturing in certain regions of the country. The greatest enemies of a robust manufacturing sector are all those things that are supposed to elimiate economic distinctions across the nation -- Federal minimum wage laws, Social Security, Medicare, etc.