[familyop]

"We used to be the world's most skillful entrepreneurs and managers. Now we're laughingstocks. What happened?"

We've abandoned, and banned, to great extents, the true source of wealth: manufacturing things that we want. Those who derive temporary wealth for themselves from the growing richness of other countries do so at the expense of our Nation. They sponsor propaganda through media companies to distract from the problem with their doubletalk.

[muawiyah]

We've been busy eliminating "jobs in manufacturing" but not the manufacturing itself. We make more stuff than ever, and a far higher percentage of it is done by industrial robots or automated systems than in other industrial nations except, perhaps, Japan.

Eventually there will be no assembly-line employment in the United States ~ probably within a couple of decades.

[Last Dakotan]

We've abandoned, and banned, to great extents, the true source of wealth: manufacturing things that we want.

True, and how many American companies make the very best of something whatever it might be? Very few.

Somewhere back in the 1970's American companies went to making cheaper mediocre products where the emphasis was only on cost. That is why moving the production to China went so fast.