Rosinante @ 45: “Jobs go overseas because the unskilled labor there is cheaper.”

That’s part of it. But only part. People around the world buy goods manufactured in Germany — hardly a low-wage country. And why have skilled jobs been lost from the US, if the problem is only low-skilled wages?

Every business is different, but in many industries (such as computer chip manufacturing — now overseas), the cost of labor is only a small part of the finished product price. However, all US businesses have to struggle with excessive regulations and the unholy overhead of a government hiring regulators who work hard to make it more difficult for the taxpayers to stay in business.

A country can have high wages. Or it can have high regulation. It can’t have both. Not in the long term — as even Germany will find out in the coming years.