[buckalfa]

I agree with you that there are benefits to the new world economy, and protectionism will not solve the problem. I see it as a zero sum game. There is only so much pie to go around and if America is to keep its current share, costs of production, i.e. wages must decline. This opens the door to big government socialism and the restrictions on personal freedom that that would entail.

[Alberta's Child]

It's not necessarily a "zero sum game" at all, but consumer demand is ultimately what drives the whole system.

Interestingly, I can easily envision a scenario where wages go up even as manufacturing becomes stronger in the U.S. The problem, though, is that this only involves individual wages and not cumulative wages. To put it simply -- a U.S. manufacturing operation tends to be a state-of-the-art process that requires a lot fewer people to do the same job that thousands of people used to do in the past. The biggest factor in the decline of manufacturing employment in the U.S. in recent decades hasn't been outsourcing at all ... it's been automation.