General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: United States has lost 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000 [View all]Ron Obvious
(6,261 posts)I certainly didn't mean to imply anything. The fact is that manufacturing (& mining etc.) are important for the health of the overall economy because it creates new wealth for the local economy, whereas service jobs such as banking moves money around that already existed within that economy, and doesn't bring any new money into the system.
It's rather simplified, of course, and there are boundary cases like "intellectual property", but it's broadly true and that's why manufacturing merits special attention. Not because it's inherently a superior form of labour or anything.
Kevin Phillips wrote about the standard path in which empires rise up and go down as they transition to a banking economy in American Theocracy by comparing the paths of the Dutch and British empires in previous centuries to the American empire of today I highly recommend that book