[matwood]

The U.S. still leads in designing things but almost everything we design is manufactured elsewhere and the people in those other countries are putting together just enough wealth to send their kids to college.

It's possible that China got ahead of the US recently, but it hasn't been true. US manufacturing output still leads the world or is very close to it. What has happened is that jobs have disappeared because of automation. The robotics you talk of is exactly what has put the US manufacturing worker out of work.