That is an interesting blog — thanks for the link.
But do you really think the data in a guy’s blog makes us a superpower? Can you envision what would happen if we suddenly couldn’t buy most of our stuff from China et al?
We are so dependent on other nations for goods (and loans) that we are no longer even self-supporting. Think about that: we can’t even support ourselves (and our debt and our govt spending.)
To conduct manufacturing on a massive scale (like we did during WWII and like China does now) a country needs cheap labor. We don’t have that now — we have unions that hold the country over a barrel instead.
Maybe I am just being cynical. But I don’t see or feel the power of the United States. There has been a shift in the balance of power, and as you know, it is a zero sum game: when someone gains power, someone else loses power.
At this moment in history, we are giving up power, not gaining it. But we can get it back with the right leadership.
Most positions in the United States are not union jobs. Unions have been growing in the public sector and shrinking in the private sector. With 4% of the world’s population, we still produce more goods than China, who have 20%.
If that were true, German car production should have ceased in the 1960's.
Labor's problem is slave labor and captive labor (no way out) undercutting wages. As long as the Chinese use prison slave-labor and people like Carlos Slim in Mexico can use political clout to hold down Mexican wages -- the old Spanish Empire wealth-building formula, with all the social problems described by Juan and Ulloa in the 18th century in their report to the King -- then labor-market poachers like Mexico and China will always be a problem for anyone who wants to live better than a Mexican campesino in his dirt-floor cinderblock casa.
(By the way, I wasn't kidding about the dirt floor. Business Week did a cover article on Mexican manufacturing and offshoring by e.g. Ford in 1994 or 1995. They found a Mexican welder living in a shack like that with his pregnant wife, two kids, and mother-in-law, and the guy was welding for Ford for $75/week. His "benefits" were taco lunch and car fare to work.)