How are we going to support a "service-based" economy if there is no one left who can afford the service?

We can't all work as Wal-Mart greeters for 15 hours a week at $7 an hour.

I think this is what has happened the last 10 years. Wages are stagnate, stock market is below 1997 in real terms. Have we not just marked time since we went global? Were is the real wealth growth the last 10 years? I know new people are rich but it has come at the cost of other people getting poorer. Re-cycling, not creating.

Frankly, if I had to work on an assembly line, doing the same task minute after minute, hour after hour, day after — well, you get the point — I’d need more than pills

That's rather short sighted to say the least James. To "manufacture" does not mean necesarily to be on an assembly line, nor does it mean to be in a union nor repetitive work. Sure, there is some of that but also much more. You have purchasing people, accountants, engineers, machinists, welders, etc. I work for a company that "manufactures" items for the military. We have no assembly line, we have no union and we employ people who's income covers the spectrum from slightly above minimum wage to 7 figures. And frankly, i'd rather "manufacture" goods for our military than only purchase a piece of sh*t "equivalant" from China or Indonesia.

Sure, being a doctor, lawyer or Injun Chief is all good and well but as I see it they are not going to hire the masses to fill the middle/upper middle class void if "manufacturing" goes away. If i'm making $10/hour I probably won't keep and Injun Chief on retainer...

To truly expand manufacturing employment, I think you need a dynamic, consumption intensive domestic economy and an aggressive export side. You aren't going to get there with shame-filled despair over our materialism or by starting trade was overseas.

But can anyone say, "trade deficit"?

My point is only, what do we sell China??? (the fact that they steal half of what we have to offer is for another thread)

A "service" economy is great... but when do we begin to service China?

1950 19%
1960 18%
1970 17%
Oh, hell, you get the point

2010? 13% 1% reduction per decade.

So go in the bathroom and blame Bush while you masturbate if it makes you feel better. But this is a decades long phenomenon, people.

All the same whoa and gloom arguments were made as we exited an agrarian economy.

You can facilitate change.........or piss up a rope.

The latter is less rewarding and helpful to the common Joe. If you really care about them, that is.

I think what concerns people more is the idea of dependence. Basically, we're the Big Dog in the political system, we have military commitments - so if we become dependent on trade for our manufactured products, what happens to us if the trade system breaks down? What if we have to import steel at exorbitant prices because we can no longer manufacture it, or (worse) there's no steel available at all because the trade system broke down?

Then, of course, there is the fact that all the other First World states are cheating to protect their own manufacturing sectors, including the EU and particularly Japan. Why not us?

No one knows what the jobs picture will look like in 20 years, which is why Tom Friedman can sell so many books to so many concerned parents of pre-teens.

We certainly want well-paying jobs that don't disappear from under us. That is true of the self-employed engineering grad as well as the union factory worker. The uncertainty is common though, and cuts across those kind of life choices.

I work at a company where I am the only on-shore programmer. I start to think about how many more years this market has, and how many I really need to full retirement. That sounds like the story of a factory worker 10 or 20 years ago, doesn't it?

What should a kid do now? I'd say (a) study hard, as hard as an Indian, and (b) don't expect to live like your parents.

Will we simply be trading cheap goods for expensive services? hard to say. The larger the inequality in wage distribution gets the more pressure there will be for those at the bottom to start demanding more and the cycle begins anew ...

I think the balance should be struck that the service industry should be taxed less to maintain an idealized economy.

Yes, we all aspire for our kids to be lawyers and doctors rather than steel workers, but unfortunately we can't all be doctors (unless Steve Verdon and the CBO are right that 50% of GDP will be devoted to healthcare in 2040 (j/k))... which means that absent those manufacturing jobs our kids might end up as managers at McDonalds. Personally, I'd rather my kid be a decently paid, unionized steelworker than a McD manager if it came to that. Unfortunately, that is rarely the choice available.

Exactly right. This is the fallacy behind the "service economy" myth. I think we're witnessing some of the effects this myth has had in our current collapse, though a more depressing effect will be the class gap widening as more and more people are sequestered into good and bad service jobs with little left in the middle - save cops and teachers...