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Posted by David Sherman on Friday, May 15, 2009 at 17:37:37 :
In Reply to: Re: Some People Look Some People See posted by Adam on Friday, May 15, 2009 at 14:39:23 :
Maybe when the government has to start buying Chinese guns, Russian tanks, French fighters, and Taiwanese battleships for our military forces, they'll realize that maybe we should have kept some heavy industry here after all.
The trouble isn't just wages. The key part of it is that we pretty well decided as a nation 40 years ago to get rid of "smokestack industries". Smelters, steel mills, foundries, and factories are dirty and dangerous and they cause pollution. We replaced them with the modern industries of information technology and finance -- much cleaner and safer sitting in an office cubicle punching keys on a computer. It was really a conscious national choice, though nobody wants to say so in so many words.
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