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I want to bridge a gap here.

The Liberal point of view seems to be that the American standard of living is declining because the Large Corporation to maximize their profits are exporting jobs abroad so that they can take advantage of cheaper labor and more lax environmental regulations. So that they can make even larger profits.

The conserative point of views is that the government is taxing the corporations to heavily (workmans comp can be classified as a taxation for my purposes), enviromental regulations is strangulating them, and Unions keep wages artificially high with respect to these corporations foreign competitors. That to survive and to make a profit which is their purpose in the first place they have to move jobs out of America.

At this point I want to point out one thing. That to enjoy as high a standard of living as in America you have to have economies of scale. You have to produce X number of units to bring the price down so that they are cheap enough for a large number of people to buy, and by producing X number of units you reduce R&D costs so that further tech advances can take place. So this is the benfit that the large corporation has bestowed on America.

That said: Both the Liberal and Conserative sides of the argument see the same thing happening. Only they see the causational factors as being different. The Liberal sees the corporation as being the culprit and advocates more governmental regulation of corporate activities...such as tariffs and or penalties for moving off shore. The conserative sees governmental intrusion at the behest of the labor party as being largely to blame. Both arguements have veracity on the surface of them, however the truth lies somewhere in the middle of both arguements. I do find it ironic that foreign car manfacturers use the USA as a car assembly place (Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Porsche, MB) however they invariably all are in RIGHT TO WORK STATES. At this point I am too tired to think anymore and am going to go to bed!