trangbang68:

“While economic prosperity may not be a zero sum game; the decimation of American manufacturing is certainly worrisome.”

In what way has American manufacturing decimated ? are you referring to the same way that American agriculture has been decimated ?

Perhaps you’re conflating a decline in manufacturing employment with a decline in output or productivity …

(http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=14159)

key passage’s:

“Total employment figures only tell part of the story, though. The percentage of U.S. workers employed in manufacturing has dropped from 16.5% in 1987 to 10.8% today. Even so, as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) points out, when you consider that manufacturing accounts for $1.5 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP), if U.S. manufacturing was a country, it would be the eighth largest economy in the world. In fact, three manufacturing sectors — food and beverage, computers and high-tech, and transportation/motor vehicles — account for roughly 30% of the total manufacturing GDP.

The most significant counterbalance to the drop in total employment has been the dramatic rise in productivity. Indeed, during the recession years, productivity (as measured by output per hour) rose by 7.0% in 2002 and 6.2% in 2003. According to NAM, over the past two decades, manufacturing productivity has grown by 94%, considerably faster than the rest of the U.S. business sector, where productivity grew by 38% over the same period.”