I have a dream, that one day we will manufacture our own products

There's a joke I was told by a former coworker one that the best thing about having an economics degree is that one can tell the people in the unemployment line with them why they are out of work. Like a truly bored nerd, I decided to look at economic data from the Federal Reserve at 2AM and found this interesting little publication titled Industrial Production and Capacity. It shows a comparison with recent historical numbers and the utilization of industrial capacity by sector. Reading through it, one notices a lot of negative signs and that the lows for recent recording periods are above current numbers in most cases. This is a result of underutilizing the manufacturing ability in this country, which should be no shock to anyone who has purchased anything other than food and water in the past year. Finding American made products ranks in difficulty with writing a thesis on relativity, making it into the NBA as an armless midget, and draining the ocean with an eye dropper.

In case you wish to see data that will ensure you have a very lonely future, here is the chart