Americans can eat a lot and shit a lot.

jrd, I applaud your comment about the financialization of the world economy. That is spot-on. Money movers and manipulators truly control the world economy now through the use of lightning fast trading and market manipulation. Even the futures exchanges have forced out many "traders" courtesy of super fast computing power and various programs that can make money for the few beneficiaries while everyone else gets screwed. Everything is "traded" and less and less is created other than wealth for a select few. This can continue for awhile until the world is in such upheaval that the entire system starts to break down. That's already happening in various parts of the world. Another key factor is the endless rise in population and the dwindling natural resources to support that population growth. No matter how you slice it, the world is becoming less and less stable. The next big wars will start over fresh water among other things... Meanwhile, the masses are entertained with sports heroes, reality TV, and other nonsense instead of paying attention to what's happening around them. Perhaps when they all run out of money to buy into these diversions the level of chaos in the world will start to spike even more.

@jrd I see no indication that you are reading what I am saying. I hope, if you ever find yourself running a bar, that you will not consider the median costumer spending to be more important than average costumer spending. Please, you don't need to spend more time explaining to me the difference between median and average.

@jrd "Median" is not more useful measure then "average" overall. Which is more useful depends on the question your are trying to answer. I still don't think "median wealth" compared to other developed countries tells us much about what the reduction of manufacturing jobs in America means. It tells us a lot about the social inequalities there, for sure, and how the ordinary person lives like. But that was not what was being discussed. A country can have "manufacturing prowess" as you say, yet distribute it's profits very unevenly and thus lower median wealth.

There's far too much information missing from this to form an actual conclusion about the state of things...

If we went along with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US and traced out the manufacturing output in the US, what would that look like? as arnarfjodur points out, manufacturing processes get better. With advances in computing, processes can be made more efficient and create an overall less demand for lower skilled manufacturing labor. At the same time, other career fields could be benefiting from employment booms that are not taken account for. With the restaurant industry hiring at such a pace, the money for those workers has to come from somewhere... restaurants don't just hire without the customer base to pay for the employees.

@jrd Well, I'm not trying to argue that American manufacturing is great, something I haven't studied very much. But I have a hard time understanding how median wealth is a good indication. Average would make more sense, although still quite simplistic. But I suspect it would not help your point as much.

It's called the "financialization" of the economy -- a handful of unproductive money movers who make huge sums of money, for doing nothing of value, except creating money for themselves, and the servant class who cleans up after them and bails them out, as needed.

@arnarfjodur Among 37 developed nations, the U.S. ranks dead last in median wealth. The median Australian is worth about 5 times more than the median American. So it's probably not our manufacturing prowess which accounts for the graph.

I'm American and I make a shit every day.

Not everyone can be German and get decent money for making things. But it's true, the US isn't good at making things anymore, and if we don't start investing in education again then we won't even be designing things to be made in China.

@robmneilson are you the Rob Neilson that interned at First Run?