[kabar]

What's driving this is productivity in every industry (even government, if you can believe that). Your statement that "good paying jobs in manufacturing have been transferred abroad" doesn't really get to the heart of the matter. Even with many good paying jobs in manufacturing being transferred abroad, the U.S. still leads the world in industrial output. That's true ... the U.S. manufactures more than China, more than Japan, and even more than the entire European Union combined.

According to recently published data from the United Nations, the fear that China will displace the United States as the world's largest manufacturing nation has been realized. Manufacturing value-added in China totaled $1.92 trillion in 2010 while U.S. manufacturing value-added was $1.86 trillion.[1] China therefore accounted for 18.7 percent of world manufacturing in 2010 while the U.S. share was 18 percent. When measured in terms of U.S. dollars, China is the largest manufacturing nation in the world.

China Widens Lead as World’s Largest Manufacturer

According to the latest research from the United Nations, China has further outpaced its competitors in world manufacturing, generating $2.9 trillion in output annually versus $2.43 trillion from the U.S., the world’s second-largest manufacturing economy.

Over the last two years, China’s manufacturing sector has made strong gains, while the U.S. has been mired in economic and political doldrums.

“In 2011, China’s manufacturing output surged by 23 percent while manufacturing output in the U.S. only increased by 2.8 percent,” the American Enterprise Institute explains. “That brought China’s manufacturing output last year to more than $2.9 trillion, which was almost half a trillion dollars (and 20 percent) more manufacturing output than the $2.43 trillion of manufacturing output that was produced in the U.S. last year.”

Depending on what statistics you believe, the EU now exceeds the US in manufacturing output. In any event, it is about the same.

The reason for this is that it simply takes less human labor to produce a single unit of anything that can be produced by human hands. The number of "good paying jobs in manufacturing" that have been moved overseas is miniscule to the "good paying jobs in manufacturing" that have been lost to automation.

I have no source to verify your assertion. Regardless of the cause there are less good paying jobs in manufacturing. I might add that I have traveled to China and seen some of the factories that international businesses have set up there, including many US firms. They have the latest in automation technology. Coupled with cheap and educated labor, they can compete in terms of productivity.

The American worker is being threatened at home and abroad. The importation of foreign workers to take American jobs and depress wages does not bode well for our future.

[Alberta's Child]

Those figures are more recent than what I've seen in the past. It's important to note that China's population is more than four times larger than the population of the U.S. -- which means that on a per-capita basis the U.S. is a far more productive economy than theirs. All other things being equal, one would expect that China's output of almost anything to be four times larger than ours. It will be a long time before that ever happens.

Getting back to the original question:

1. Do you think China has grown to this position because the U.S. is importing tens of millions of immigrants?

2. Do you think the loss of "good paying jobs in manufacturing" is a cause of a problem, or an effect of something else?