Impossible!! Paul Ross and the other NAFTA/China-phobes said our manufacturing has been enfeebled. Will they ever admit their error?
Look at the other links for more good news.
No. The argument will be one of two things. First, we are just low wage assembly line workers who allow other countries to do the serious manufacturing and then re-import those products here for final assembling. Or, it will be that we make more in total dollars but not in total units. As if making more toothpicks, T-shirts and cheap molded plastic toys is the way to raise our standard of living.
Who knows, maybe they've come up with a third option since then.
--have totally missed the point of a pretty good working paper, and that's the shame.
Sure, I'll disagree with Kotlikoff's goofy bankruptcy scenario but I'll be forgiving because he is right with the idea that there are a few course corrections that definately are in order (Social Security for one). I'll also disagree with the idea that somehow the only solution is flipping to a flat tax --IMHO that's a different solution for a different problem. Once again I'll be forgiving because Kotlikoff is in fact right that we need solutions that simply aren't 'in the box'. (Good commentary here).
But to say the reason we're bad off is because of China? --because of our manufacturing sector? Sheesh. Next thing we'll be hearing them telling us we want to bring back the gold standard or something...