[Riverman94610]

Yes,the talented few will make lemons out of lemonade,adapt and survive.
However,millions more who are less educated and less talented who would normally be gainfully employed and paying taxes are now out of work,filling the unemployment and welfare lines.In the past they would have filled the bulk of relatively well paying manufacturing jobs but now they are obselete.
If you are a believer in Social Darwinism then this is just the natural order of things.Personally,I think these trends,tho perhaps inevitable in a free market economy,is a real human tragedy.

[Sonny M]

In the past they would have filled the bulk of relatively well paying manufacturing jobs but now they are obselete.

Well, there is also the other half of the theory, that if manufacturing jobs are created in say Vietnam, they will have money to spend, and they will want to buy products, products that preferrably come from america. That is a long term approach to the thinking, that everything balances out. There are obvious and clear holes in this thinking and it contradicts the view both parties are espousing today.

There is a trend of thinking that believes that all white collar jobs require a better educated worker then manufacturing jobs. Sales requirements are simply and generally the same as manufactering. An Example would be somone who manufactered say office supplies, loses that job, and winds up working at staples now selling the very items that they used to make.

However, the hitch is that, that job might or might not pay as well, its an unknown variable. A huge part of the free market and free trade theory that is espoused by both parties, are that we are turning into a service oriented economy, where our people now provide servies and no longer manufacter. There are some very obvious dangers to changing wholesale from going from manufactering to service oriented in policy.

[slohand]

The real tradjedy is the lib contoled "education" system has not done the job.