[twblalock]

There are two ways to save money on manufacturing: outsourcing to cheaper foreign workers, or automation.

Until recently outsourcing was the cheaper of those two options. That leads people to blame outsourcing for job losses. However, if automation had been cheaper at the time, it would have been more prevalent and probably would have taken the blame instead of outsourcing.

At some point automation will be cheaper than manufacturing in Asia, and then Asian factory jobs will disappear as the American jobs have.