Here's an interesting link to read:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

After reading it, I'd be interested to know everyone's thought on economics in the good old USA. My thoughts are that business is business. It will always migrate to the lowest cost and highest profit margin it can. If that means sending production overseas, it will. How else can it compete with other businesses that do? In my opinion, our government is responsible for this mess. It's their job to prevent unfair competition by putting tariffs on imports. NAFTA and other outsourcing to foreign countries only put's more money in the pockets of the wealth holders in the end. It puts work conditions for manufacturing back to the industrial age. The only difference is that we can't see it because it's across the border or sea. Out of sight is out of mind, right? All our good life in the US is paid for when we buy goods and services. If you buy goods and services produced by manufacturers outside our borders, you're neglecting our well being as a country. This can't be fixed by boycotting. Everything is made overseas! You have to buy it somewhere. The government has to create more favorable conditions for competition here at home. Only then will we need to hire people to make things again. This cure will be slow and painful at best. Does anyone else have a different idea?

america seems a service and information based economy rather than a product based economy.

1 in 8 jobs in america for example are directly related to tourism.

It isnt the government that needs to change the conditions, its the people. If we wanted to produce products here more cheaply than we can get it from overseas we no doubt could probably do it.

Yep, SK. Economics in North America (I'm extending your question a little so that it pertains to me) is difficult. Not a lot of manufacturing, because our workers cannot support the standard of living they want on the wages they can get doing it. It's much cheaper to go elsewhere.

I find it interesting that you hate NAFTA. I do too, but from the other side of the border. The lobbyists for various industries on both sides of the border cry foul, and tariffs are put up. You can't have it both ways! I'm thinking mostly about the tariff on softwood lumber (which has bankrupted a lot of mill towns) and the ban on cattle (ostensibly because of BSE - there was one case found in Canada, same as in USA).

Part of the problem is machinery. It seems cheaper and more efficient for companies to buy machines to do jobs that were done by workers 50-100 years ago (they never ask for raises, are more easily repaired, and never talk back). End result is that the manufacturing we DO perform is done by less people.

Read: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. I, personally, don't enter Wal-Mart stores any more... Everything in them seems wrong to me. America has exchanged charming small shops run by families for lower prices and mediocrity. I actually wrote a paper in which I accused Wal-Mart of being a cult... One of my finer works.

I personally cant stand wallmart either. There is this 'air' or feeling if you will in the stores that just dosnt seem right.

Its almost like walking though a graveyard of zombies shopping for moss to cover their tombs. ICK.

Anyway thats my 2 1/2 cents