If the rules for other countries like China and Mexico were the same as in the U.S when it comes to labor laws and wages were comparable, the results might have been different. But I am skeptical about even that, because the price of labor drives the price of the product. Low consumer goods would not have been achieved. Now chinese companies are buying and owning a lot of the food processing companies in the US. In twenty or so years, the same problem will arise in that industry.

The main point that I see in this is that the economic process of being a consumer society and not a manufacturing society made the middle class less prosperous. I remember almost twenty years ago going to a meeting about the U.S economic transforming into a service oriented economic model. The US economy was supposed to benefit from low cost goods that were manufactured overseas. Both democratic and republican presidents over the last twenty or more years were pushing that model. The factory worker was going to be retrained in the service sector with computers, and finance, and intellectual management jobs. I attended several seminars and lectures about this since I work in the financial sector. I just see that a lot of people did not benefit from this model.

Look at my response to DenoPeno, I don't want to post it twice. I just want to know what anyone thinks and share some meaningful discussion.