Who's fault is it that we let china import all our goods, americas wealth was built on producing durable goods

we gave up the one thing that made america great after world war 2, why do times have to change now, just because everybody wants to save money, that's not right because we build greatness on this and now we gave up that greatness, if we all did hard labor work we'll be a more prosperous nation because everybody will have a good job doing meaningful work, not work designed to ruin us

As a couple other posters have alluded to, the American economy is not as competitive on the world stage because not every nation has the same set of rules.

Classical economics takes the view that labor and capital are freely mobile. In today's economy, capital tends to be.........labor tends not to be.

So, in labor-intensive industries like durable goods, countries with the cheapest labor tend to dominate.

its our fault

look, mass production and manufacturing has become more and more expensive in the US over the past century. there is a standard of living we demand that can only be facilitated by maintaining production overseas in lesser developed countries.

we can either fight this, by mandating all goods be produced domestically and accept that they will be 10 to 50 to 100 times more expensive - OR we can capitalize on what we're good at in the US today - technological advances and innovations in general throughout all types of industry: electronics, medicine, automotive ... any industry. we're good at ideas, and we're also good at movies, music, mass media and such. America's future is in exporting ideas and advancements while maintaining a certain level of domestic production which globally cannot be facilitated.

this is a drastic over-simplification, and there are other theories, but this is the plan that makes most sense to me.

5 Reasons we now Outsource - The Real Ones.

1. Excessive taxation that prohibited american companies having adequate funds for the necessary Research and Development to keep us 20 years ahead of the rest of the world, and number 1 in productivity with our machines/ technology, and production like we once had.

2. Excessive government regulations, costing american companies billions each year to comply with. Most of which are not necessary, and only cash grabs by gov't bureaucracy.

3. China has artificially kept its RMB currency down, amidst protest, allowing investers like me to take advantage of even better exchange rates.

4. Four years ago, china literally removed all government regulations and taxation on its companies when they sold them to private individuals. This gives Chinese companies the "free" infrastructure to expand that american companies once had. America is playing by a different set of rules.

5. Prison labor. A great deal of my product is low skilled hand made work, and contracted to Chinese prisons. Labor rates are subsequently 50% lower than normal by this means.
Few know about this, or talk about it.

The meaningful work you speak of is much more fulfilling, had we not been constantly bombarded by media, corporations, and society programing us to be mega-consumers.

I think the only one to blame would be our government for allowing the imports without enough import taxes charged. The higher import tax would make it competitive. You can't blame us really because we'd be fools to not buy for the best price available. You can't blame the Chinese, because, like us, they have to work to survive. Business owners only look at one thing-profit. So it is on our government to balance things and they don't. I'm still trying to figure out why anyone in the US would be for the "Global Economy" other than big business. We are giving away the American Pie and I don't know why. Bringing up the standard of living for the World, unfortunately brings ours down.