Raising the minimum wage will make the situation even worse. As Obama claims to be helping the average working man he is simultaneously plotting their destruction.

Actually, the pendulum for industrialization is swinging back in our direction. The basic factor is our new levels of energy production. It makes our products more competitive.
It's true about Detrot. The unions priced themselves out of the market. Auto production is alive and well in the Southern States.
It's well documented that there are hundreds of thousands of manufacturing job that go unfilled in US factories.
That's because manufacturing is hi tech with CNC machines and such. Requires Math skills and more education.
We have >1,000,000 kids dropping out of high school every year. Because the adult establishment doesn't have the brains to show the kids why they should stay in school.
IF the kids stayed in school, got education, and better paying jobs, then they'd be able to afford better built American made products. I've seen too much poorly made Chinese stuff myself. Get education. Work smarter. Buy American.

Off course collapse is the goal, of the dollar at least. Who does Obama meet with in the Oval Office - Soros.
We have been warned for years about the increasing trade deficits, but no one listened. The so-called middle class continued to spend and charge. I have known people who had over 20 credit cards, maxed out or nearly so. How, do the banks allow it, I have no idea. This is how weare able to buy more than we export.
Under the teachings in the government schools, students are told they should not lower themselves to take jobs paying less than $100,000 per year. No experience, little to contribute, but a strongly held belief by many who subsequently never leave home. Do they ask what they can do to produce an income - no, they wait for that dream job to fall in their entitled laps - unless parents cut them off.
Sure, there are job openings, because we have no qualified candidates who possess a work ethic, a willingness to start at the bottom and work up, and a basic ability to communicate.
Yes, there is industry in the South, because the South is less tied up by union requirements, in spite of Obama's efforts to make the South unionized.
No matter how they talk about preserving the middle class, the D.C. bunch work to eliminate it in favor of socialism - the poor and their well off rulers.
Why were incandescent light bulbs replaced by Congress with Chinese toxic CFLs? Someone's palm got greased, but the workers got hurt. Next on the list is Obama's war on coal.
The dream of home ownership is almost down the tubes.Despite all the D.C. talk about making mortgages affordable to all, they are working behind the scenes to do away with property rights via Agenda 21.
Yes, they are out to seize the 401K funds, and would likely be very close had Pelosi not lost the speakership. It was already in committee.
Anyone who thinks things can go on as is, has been drinking the Kool-Aid.

I have to disagree with the thesis; and I deny that the many claims are facts. The article is just 18th century Mercantilism in modern dress. "Basically, we are buying far more stuff from the rest of the world than they are buying from us. That means that far more money is constantly leaving the country than is coming into the country". Adam Smith exploded that myth over 200 years ago. Allow me to say that you could make the same claims about your neighborhood, city, county, or state. We have a lot of "bedroom communities." If you look at just the cash flows -and ignore their causes- it would seem that "people in Steel City" are pouring money in "Sleepytown" and then that the people in Sleepytown are "buying more from other places" than they sell to those other places. Thus Sleepytown goes into debt while Oil City, Boomtown, Siliconia, and other places have piles and piles of Sleepybucks - which the Sleepies must borrow back to stay alive. (And remember: Steel City is in the same boat as they pour dollars into Sleepyville's cheap labor markets.) Put that way, this "trade deficit" nonsense is exposed as a fallacy.

Another fallacy is the myth of the middle class. No one wants to be poor. No one wants to be crude. And we dislike the rich. They are snobs and sissies. So, we call ourselves "middle class." In truth the middle three quintiles are statistically the "middle class" - but would be so in any economic picture. More to the point in classical economics the "middle class" consists of owners of small businesses and self-employed professionals. It is defined (following Marx) by who owns the tools of production. But in Objective economics we all have the same toolbox: our brains. It is just that some people take care of their tools, buy good tools, make new tools no one thought of before, and so on.

The myth of the middle class was sold to laborers who enjoyed cars, television sets, two-week paid vacations, healthcare benefits, company picnics, etc., etc. Part of that was the "American dream" of owning your own home, i.e., being a landed serf, unable to move if the local markets decline. America was most vibrant when people could and did move where the markets were. Consider that the Federal government made mortgages attractive by letting homeowners take deductions on interest paid. It was not out of the goodness of their hearts that the government did that. They paved the road to serfdom. I admit that we made our money, buying a home in 1991 and selling it in 1998. We lucked out and we have been renters ever since.

Yet another fallacy is the "good paying job." Defined how? How much should you be able to consume without forethought in order to know that you have have "a good paying job"? Moreover, it was those "good paying jobs" that destroyed Detroit and the Great Lakes rustbelt. You could get a higher wage without a higher education. We had three or four generations of parents who could not help their kids with their homework -- but it did not matter because they could help their kids get a job working in a factory, a human reduced to a machine. Or do you expect a society of doctors and lawyers and accountants to support itself without factory laborers? ... Oh... back to the problem...

Indeed, America does support itself - and we export.
http://www.worldsrichestcountries.com/to...

Indeed, the rules of double-entry bookkeeping prevent you from any "balance of payments" problem.

What you buy is worth more than what it costs. Thus, by buying Chinese goods, we become richer. Of course, they do, too, because it costs them less to produce than they sell it for. Both sides profit. Why do you have a problem with that?

Didn't Clinton arrange for US cutting edge manufacturing technology to be sold to China?

Makes one wonder why our gov even started this and want it to continue. Do they do any good at all? It seems a collapse is the goal.

It did not take long for those of the love of money to rear their head. Greed was their ultimate goal and no one would stand in their way. Competition was bad because all could participate and when those geniuses seen this problem as they call it then they decided for you and I. They decided. So John got up and left the building.

But our Dear Leader, Lord Barry (Allah's peace be unto him!) has assured us that all is well!

Pass me the kool-aid, somebody...quick!

Here is an interesting video along these lines.
https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/4FrGxO2...

To figure out what's happening, you need to look deeper than proximate causes. The fact is, manufacturing jobs were going to decrease under any scenario, because economies of scale are decreasing, meaning that the number of people needed to make something is less than before. That's what progress is all about. It's a fool's errand to think that the jobs that our parents had will still be there when we're ready to go to work. That song has been playing out for over 30 years now, and still people are shocked. When you can manufacture something with a 3D printer, how many people do you think you'll need for your manufacturing operations? And why should a businessman pay up to $100 per hour for a job that costs only $10 overseas, even if they're only half as efficient as Americans?!? The very essence of Ayn Rand's philosophy is that one depends on oneself, not others. That means that it's our job to figure out how we are going to survive in the coming economy, not to complain about things that we have no control over. The fact is, those jobs are NEVER coming back, and shrinking economies of scale will ensure that the remaining jobs will continue to shrink. In the late 1800s, some 60% of the population was engaged in agriculture. Today, it's about 2%, but we're producing more agricultural output than ever. The same thing is happening in manufacturing. We need to be looking for what's going to replace manufacturing. That's the sweet spot.

There is a mixed concept of what economy means nowadays. For it´s true that there´s local economies and national economies, today´s world is more and more a globalized economy and yes, the world view cannot be shunned even from a local perspective.

The world "market" of production makes my nation a peripheric one, undeveloped country that, if we as argentines only knew to full extent, could jump to being a developed country in no time. Argentina is the soy capital of the world, our main economy thrives on the sale of soy to China and the world, over the historical production of meats and grains, dairy and wine. Despite this truth, this change, the production industry of argentina is that of the turn of the last century´s one; raw. Our industry is third rate, we manufacture very little compared to what we sell off straight from the earth. Even aluminum industries are behind still, we basically "feed" the world, we´re a farm like country. We may have jewels, diamonds, water, copper and other natural resources that are also being exploited but, like US Southern States, we´re a conservative agricultural nation (we even exploit fossil fuels, we export them). CFK´s administration and her husband´s before her still maintain the basic principles of the late XIX Centuries aristocracy. Low wages to exploit natural resources and sell them to the best bidding international market. Our inflation is only beneficial for these few landholders, who produce in argentine pesos and sell in Yen, Euros and Dollars. Truely post Taylorism at it´s best. The State of Argentina is dressing up as a "People´s State", but executes as neo liberalist one. They can´t fool me.

China, on the other hand, has rich land. But as we all know, the have something that is both a problem and a solution at the same time, demographics. This reality allows them to have a very high demand for labor, so they pay low wages for production and, thus, later sell for lower prices than US, European or other central countries and regions. How do you compete with that?

The answer is simple, you don´t. Either you advance more and more in upgrading factories with machines or you lower wages and turn the US into something other than what it´s always been. Argentina or China (extreme capitalism with very low wages). This is not healthy for the US economy for the inner US market has always been an example world wide, and the offering of financial access and power to the people not only is healthy for the people, but for the economy. But today, to buy Nike shoes is not really a patriot act if you come to think of it. Not even Mickey Mouse of Coca Cola are produced by Americans, so go figure.

The new capitalism, therefore, isn´t an industrial one per say. It´s just the next step, based on the new sciences industries like Google, Microsoft and others are now, as we speek, employing foreign help. Why? Because the Government doesn´t train people to think, it trains them to do. And these new industries are about thinking first, some just thinking only. The new currency isn´t blue collar power, the new worker ants are all white collar workers. And though "the working man" will never be extinct, he shall become more and more rare. So ideas and the patenting of them is the new currency, the new economy, the new industry. And education plays an important role here, for these companies are not only hiring engineers, "hard" scientists and economists as their white collar assets, no. Graphic designers, sociologists, psychologists and creative thinkers are now just as important as a computer geek. Thus is the way of the future...

This whole issue comes down to the fiscal deficit. The trade deficit is just an effect of the fiscal deficit. The shift away from mfg may be completely unrelated and not be a problem. The deficit, though, is a huge problem.