Obama calls Steve Jobs' success prime example of American wealth

Or, more specifically - how will racing China (and every other developing country) to the bottom in the manufacturing game be sufficient to maintain the middle class?

Everybody brings this up, but the reason manufacturing was sent overseas was because of technological progress. If you can't even convince Americans to pick their own peaches anymore, how are you going to convince them to make their own sneakers like they do in Indonesia?

cheap renewable energy

Coincidentally, the cheap labor overseas might make this a reality in the form of inexpensive thin-film solar panels.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO

We just do it more efficiently, resulting in lower manufacturing employment.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USAPEFANA

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/OPHMFG

what America needs to maintain the middle class throughout the 21st century

20th century notions of the "middle class" are probably already becoming obsolete; talking about "throughout" the 21st century is really premature. Going from 2000 to 2100 is like going from 1900 to 2000, but faster.

It seems likely that we're moving into more of an "information age" where you will basically have a prosperous and successful "information class" (with a huge variation in income, but even those at the bottom will be living comfortably), and a "labor class" for which there is less and less labor over time.

Fortunately, these "classes" are not fundamentally based on birth (as classes were originally envisioned). Also, I think it's perfectly feasible for the size of the "labor class" to shrink at a comfortable rate (i.e., people needing jobs will not outstrip available work to the degree that lots of people have to be living in extreme poverty). But for that to happen, it will be necessary to abandon strong welfare policies in countries with large segments of society that are "stuck" in the "labor class" (America in particular comes to mind).

This is just off the cuff thinking... I may want to retract some of this later on.

Countries that have a substantial percentage of their population that is not very educated have a comparative advantage (in the technical sense [1]) in fields that require a lot of unskilled labor. E.g. raw materials & basic manufacturing. So the developed world will always have a hard time competing with them in these fields.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

The way he tends to talk about Apple is that they want to make products that sell so that they'll get to "come to work the next day" and keep making more. Obviously there's some public positioning / PR going on there, but I think there's at least a kernel of truth, too.

Steve Jobs sits at the core of what Apple represents by his attention to detail down to the aesthetic micrometer. There is an almost sinister genius in what he does at Apple, and at the end of the day you end up with a consistent, applicable and fluid user experience at every level including sales. People want to be involved in that because they know what they're getting. Apple constantly proves itself as a company that does more than talk about thinking outside the box. They think outside the shipping container, and down the street some.

Steve Jobs is an entrepreneur who knew attention to detail, and consistently pushing the envelope beyond a "good product" will bring in dollars.

Zuck sits at the core of a social networking behemoth that has no clear sense of direction, constant changes to using the site, frequent controversy about privacy, fragmented user networks, and no consistency in approach.

Mark Zuckerberg, as much as some people will suffer from bleeding ears after hearing (reading) this: got lucky.

Until then, it's kind of a joke to do so.