Many of the manufacturing jobs we lost went to developing countries where they enabled rural poor to find factory jobs that in turn fueled their consumer economies. It wasn't all good, but it did help many of them.
We were told, by teachers, by economists that this transition was inevitable as globalization progressed.
We were warned technology jobs were the key to avoiding becoming part of a growing underclass.
These developing countries only served as a place to obtain cheap/slave laborers for former American companies to transplant their factories to.
I heard many US auto workers whine and cry when Japanese cars made the scene in America, the truth is Japan had built a better mouse trap.
This healthy competition made American car companies produce a better product, today Toyota, Honda and others employ American workers in America to assemble these "foreign" cars.
This is a far cry from China, had they started to develop and produce on their own a product that beat America in the market place, then so be it, instead they pimped out cheap labor.
Our own government, the one for the people, by the people and of the people sold out the American worker, the same ones that they send to fight wars.
In my opinion it was treason to intentionally put America in a position to be borrowing money from a hostile foreign government.
" We were told, by teachers, by economists".... really? When I was in school metal shop was still being pushed at "blue collar" kids. In the Detroit area the first rumblings most people heard of globalization and so called free trade were in the late 80's and early 90's when nafta and gatt were being put in place against the will of the people.
As for going in to high tech. jobs, many did this and found that their wages were being brought down by the number of foreign high tech people being given visas to come to the US and stagnate wages.
To some it is all too obvious that their has been an intentional economic assault on the American middle class, this will lead to several results, results that will bite the greedy 1% in the ass.
1. China never developed a true nation of consumers, they rely on our market place to make money, a market place where discretionary income is on the demise... who will they sell this inferior junk to when Americans have no money? China has used their gain to build "ghost cities" and a large military, not a middle class.
2. When people quit believing in a system, it implodes, remember the late great USSR? One soviet worker was quoted as having said "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
3.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Someday the people will abolish a government that only takes care of 1% of the people.
So, there is little anyone can do except to watch history unfold before us as it unfolded before our ancestors when this nation was founded.
