[Toddsterpatriot]

The other thing to keep in mind is the trends in GDP growth and industrial production. Both of those statistics are much higher for China than for the US.

Yes, they have higher GDP growth, if you believe the numbers put out by Communists. As far as industrial production, have you seen this graph?

[defenderSD]

Yeah I know what you're saying, but that graph is not as impressive as it looks at first glance, because the left-hand axis is truncated at 1800. So it's a zoomed-in view of industrial production that makes it look stronger that it really is in terms of percent growth.

I think the problem is more with jobs than with industrial production output. Much of our growth in industrial production has been in items produced almost entirely by machinery: chemicals, construction materials, electric power, etc. The issue is that we're losing a lot of skilled & uskilled manufacturing jobs to China, which IS hurting some sectors of the middle class. I'm not one of these eternal alarmists who've been saying "we're losing our middle class" for the last fourty years (LOL), but manufacturing people have been hurt by China and there hasn't been enough offset to help our middle class from China buying products from our strongest industries: technology, software, and entertainment products.