So where, exactly, are our jobs going

Originally in the WSJ:

"Contrary to conventional U.S. beliefs, the research found that American manufacturing workers weren't the biggest losers. The U.S. lost about two million manufacturing jobs in the 1995-2002 period, an 11% drop. But Brazil had a 20% decline. Japan's factory work force shed 16% of its jobs, while China's was down 15%.

Joseph Carson, director of global economic research at Alliance, says the reasons for the declines are similar across the globe: Gains in technology and competitive pressure have forced factories to become more efficient, allowing them to boost output with far fewer workers. Indeed, even as manufacturing employment declined, says Mr. Carson, global industrial output rose more than 30%."

Yet the Left hammers away at Bush as the first President to have a net job loss since Hoover. If our jobs are going to Brazil or China or Mexico, because of some Bush economic policy and yet all of these same nations are losing jobs despite the influx of outsourced American jobs, there is clearly something much larger at work.

Let's keep in mind a big picture. It is more than likely that every manufacturing job could be replaced by automation. The number of farriers in this country has been shrinking over the past 100 years. It wasn't the fault of any President and had any one of them appointed a farrier czar, it would not have made a difference. Horses as primary transportation were being replaced by motor vehicles. We can sit around an bemoan the loss of manufacturing jobs but does it really matter if the job went to a Malaysian or a robot? A lost job is a lost job -- you change with the times or you get left behind. Eventually the Malaysian will expect a high standard of living, automation cost will decrease and the Malaysian will then lose to the robot just as the American worker is losing today. It's no one's fault, it just is. It's progress. It's invention. It's evolution and it's fine.