I looked at my Social Security statement (the one that shows ho much you've reported to earn over time) and it showed that I was making between 18-25k during the young years of my life.
Now at 32, I make much more because I worked long enough, suckling on the nipple of this corporation and that until I had the skills (which I was paid very little for) to start my own business.
There is a problem in the understanding of manufacturing. It is a complex multi-dimenssional process involving R&D, Proto-typing, productio, assembly, warehouse operations, channel and retail marketing, distribution, sales, accounting, customer service, and more. Each one of these individual functions is essential to the process.
Enough of my B-school lecture, but you can't say that we're losing manufacturing jobs as a blanket statement. You might say we're losing assembly jobs or some other component, but to be a product company (and the US has some damn good product companies), you have to do all of these funtions.
with the level of college debt a person needs to take on to get an engineering degree, who would do that to get a $40K job, and then have a career competing against foreign labor?