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So do you think the US has an "Auto" or that it has to work towards one? I used an example that would have been applicable a hundred years ago, because I'm not sure what 'should be disappearing' jobs would be protected from what 'not yet here' innovation under such a misguided policy - I'm smart, but my future-telling abilities are rather limited. Perhaps a more timely observation would compare steel-mill jobs to internet jobs, tho that's still rather dated.

Should there be more R&D funding then? Perhaps. But what in, and who should pay for it? Using my example above, the government would most likely pour lots of taxpayer money down holes like 'improved buggy-whips', 'improved buggies', and 'horse hybridization' rather than internal combustion engines, mass production, and other innovations that private industry brought forth at no or minimal cost to the taxpayer.

You make it sound llike we have no choice but to engage with workers world-wide in a race to the bottom. That is the end result of policies your type typically promote; look at the stellar standard of living in such workers' paradises as the Soviet Union, China, and various third-world economies that have 'benefitted' from socialism over the years.

This country offers an unmatched infrastructure and the most productive work force in the world. That combined with things like great schools, low crime, relatively unpolluted environment and uparralleled cultural opportunities make America the best place in the world for anyone with the money and the ambition to create more wealth for themselves. Agreed.

Much of this is due to the efforts of the 95% of americans who receive their income from wages. Actually, that 95% benefits from the above environment, enabling them to Be more productive, then benefit from the advances introduced by those industrious entrepreneurs, which leads to an even better environment, creating an upward spiral until laziness and/or corruption intervene. (And/or the given member of that 95% shifts gears to become an entrepreneur, innovator, and/or investor, but then they're not part of the 95% anymore.)

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that in order to preserve that state of affairs we measure our economic strength by the well being of those people If you want to measure it that way, you're more than welcome to do so. If you want to administer policy designed to promote that goal at the expense of those ambitious entreprenreurs and investors, you're promoting an economic body that will be all muscle with atrophying intelligence and coordination, and will go the way of the neanderthal rather than the way of an Olympic athlete.