Henri', your predictions seem quite logical, and more than a little plausible. Mon ami, you are wise beyond your years, you lil' "goose-stepper", you! (But watch your twenty, le Icebuster is closing in on you!) Please, don't let the naysayers get ya' down, they're merely flustered; dazzeled by the bright, shining light of a valid point of view. (That, or blinded by the reflective glare upon their "hammers and sickles".) :p

Icebuster, I really enjoyed your point concerning archaic business falling by the wayside. Pity the same practice does'nt apply to government bureaucracy! Duplication, nay, triplication, and the increased expenses borne by us, the taxpayers, for such redundancy.

IB, I grasp, and accept, your point, although it might be a tad bit over simplified, as to causation. (Over-regulation, excessive litigation , high labor/energy costs, taxes, (multiple levels of federal, state, and local), et al.) A solution to the dilemma of out-sourcing is in the long term best interest of the American economy, and its middle class. Both Democrats and Republicans are going to have to give quite a bit here, to preserve whats left of our industrial base.

It is quite possible, that it is, as you've stated, a transitory period, (albeit a painful one), between one industrial era to another. (As the 1st industrial revolution was, transforming a rural, agrarian economy to an urban, industrial one.) But the devolution of our middle-class does not bode well for our immediate future, or the prospects for government reforms to tax code/structure. This old, dinosaur still shudders at the prospect of the new, so-called "service economy".