That really wasn't my point, but I didn't do a good job of developing it. In a nutshell: if nothing is done to stem the tide of entire industries being shipped from North America to China one has to wonder how long it will be before there's no economy to speak of. Yes, yes, I'm aware economics pundits would have us all believe that the glorious shift to an "information economy" is the grand way forward and anything that smacks of isolationism is to be roundly rejected (for reasons that are entirely mysterious to me), however the unemployment numbers in the US and the decline of real wages over the last 30 years suggests something else altogether.

Generally speaking, industries get shipped off to China because people in China are poorer, and will work for less money. When there are as many industries in China as in the US, they won't be poorer any more, and the flow will stop.

However, our current spate of unemployment isn't due to China - otherwise things wouldn't have suddenly gone to hell in '08 but would have gotten slowly worse as China industrialized. The decline in real wages in the US might be due to competition for natural resources from China and India and Africa and South America, but generally I'm not going to complain about things going well in countries much poorer than my own.

"Generally speaking, industries get shipped off to China because people in China are poorer, and will work for less money. When there are as many industries in China as in the US, they won't be poorer any more, and the flow will stop."

Net result: global average wages settle somewhere near what a Pakistani brickmaker would call "prosperity". What you're describing isn't a win.