There is some truth to all of that, but I always think how one of the first industries to be decimated was textiles and the associated sewing plants. Those jobs were mostly non-union and paid around $8.00 per hour and less when they really began to disappear in the 1980s, or before. When jobs can be moved to $.50 per hour labor as was the case a few years back, still to $1.00 per hour labor, it doesn't have a lot to do with efficiency or anything else. It has to do with reducing the US standard of living because the jobs are only partially being replaced, as our real unemployment rate and the explosion of temp and part-time work shows.
And since China India have combined populations of 2.3 billion, and Indonesia and other nations easily kick that to 3 billion, then there is virtually unlimited cheap labor, both unskilled and skilled, available to export and outsource to.
It's just a question of how much Americans will allow their standard of living to be reduced. There is no strategy to combat the available cheap labor because it isn't possible to backfill with newly created jobs all the jobs that are being exported, because we need jobs for every educational and skill level. And we always will need large numbers of jobs at every skill level.
Germany has followed a sane policy. The US has not, but it will take more years and more deterioration before the nitwits and peddlers of one-sided trade as free trade will admit the to the disasters they have brought.
Well..... ok. But you've introduced a lot of rather difficult considerations here, not least of which is a significant measure of government control over business and industry.
And that, in a political environment that is characterized by factions whose very viability depends on avoiding rational discussion, let alone compromise.
Germany has followed a sane policy. The US has not, but it will take more years and more deterioration before the nitwits and peddlers of one-sided trade as free trade will admit the to the disasters they have brought.
Great postings Will....I am never to explain it so eloquently.