Direct Action. What'd you think?

[Undertoad]

I think it's a lot more complicated than that. Think about it another way: people who are middle class just aren't going to do those repetitive and boring jobs any longer. So manufacturers have to look elsewhere for cheap labor. But if they couldn't find that labor overseas, they'd likely just automate, and now nobody gets those few dollars.

It's like - McDonald's restaurants are staffed by high schoolers, for the most part; it's cheap labor and gives the young a nice introduction to the working world, learning how not to be late and such. But if those young'uns were not available, McDonald's could easily take those manual methods and automate them.

This has always been the case. When labor gets too expensive, it is not replaced by other labor. Cars are not welded by hand any longer. 20 years ago circuits were hand-soldered, now they are all done by machine.

As cheap labor gets harder to find, automation improves. And if cheap labor were really hard to find, automation would be an economic priority. IT workers currently make their buck by automating processes and data movement, but we could just as easily work at automating manufacturing.