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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (28228)	9/8/2006 2:03:55 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542202

We haven't lost manufacturing in the US. We've lost manufacturing employment, primarily due to higher productivity, but we manufacture more in the US than we did in the past. The discussion started relative to employment. That is still the angle I'm taking. Manufacturing employment in the USA is down in absolute numbers, not just as a fraction of employment in the USA. True, productivity contributes to that process, but more imported goods is a larger factor. Productivity also affects the service industries, but employment there is up. You might note that independent of where goods are manufactured, the local checkout clerk lives in your own neighborhood. So indeed, if Wal-Mart sources more from China, and prices are cheaper, and US consumers buy more, I'd expect service employment might go up. Because powerful special interests want to keep getting their pork. The powerful special interests in this case are a few million family farmers. The prospect of the American family farm being finally squeezed out is not something any politician wants on his/her watch. That doesn't mean the US will shrink in response to their growth. It most likely means the US will be under worse competitive pressure.