What does the west do? Tech is the only real growth industry left in the US. Right now 80% of the county slaves away in dead end jobs to cater to the remaining 20% white collar professional+capital class. That 20% seems like its going to get smaller :/
Eventually something has got to give in this country. Soon nothing will be left but a hollow husk.
I remember right around 2000 George Will bloviated about how Russia was a third world nation by economy size, why do we treat them with such deference.
Psst George: They still have a LOT of nukes.
That might be us. A shell of a country with a failing economy, strong military, and huge number of nukes.
Of course right around then global warming might really start taking off and a billion or two people are starving and become refugees. Then we see what happened in the EU and Syria, but worldwide and 100x worse.
Could tech and manufacturing combine to become automated high-end tech?
Could robotics and aggressive automation of production lines make this shift? ...Or is it in fact more complex than it seems and the lead times for setting up these kinds of businesses too large to have a useful effect in the short/medium term?
The US manufacturing real output continues to increase and never really declined (briefly in the Great Recession but quickly restored). Manufacturing employment on the other hand continues to drop.
Eventually something has got to give in this country. Soon nothing will be left but a hollow husk.