We make more stuff than ever with less people, the age of automation is upon us. The only way to compete with low wage oversea work forces is to automate everything. This is exactly what has been done.
The more important question is how much of the industrial base that is key to our long term economic health have we shipped overseas simply so we can make more short term profit. This requires strategic thinking to address. The Chinese are strategic thinkers, they have systematically taken low tech industry and moved up the ladder into high tech industry. It is only a matter of time before they are cranking out autos, planes, and space vehicles because we thought it was a great idea to outsource everything. Their star is rising and ours is falling because we have foolishly allowed greed and stupidity by our financial and political class to undermine our countries long term economic health.
My last factory job went automated which was fine because I learned to program, operate, and maintain the robotics. Then someone in Mexico was trained to do the same for a quarter of the whopping $12 an hour I made and that was the end of that.
One problem I saw in American industry are the idiots who weren’t about to let their precious babies get their hands dirty. Better that they get their hands dirty in a nation that belongs to them than to keep clean in a nation that belongs to someone else.