You make a good point, Shane: we consumers are as much to blame as anyone. We want the cheapest goods, and if you put something made in Canada or the U.S. next to something made in China or India, the “local” product will almost always be more expensive. We have Walmart-ed our industries to death.

My theory is that the only jobs of the future will be service jobs that more or less demand local work. Doctors? You can’t practically ship yourself piecemeal to another country, so doctors will be needed. Lawyers? You need to try your case in a local court, so those guys will have jobs. Midwives, dentists, optometrists: yes, yes, yes. Street cleaners, plumbers, electricians, painters, interior decorators, physiotherapists… can’t offshore those jobs. Same thing with auto mechanics: they can make the cars elsewhere, but you aren’t going to ship it away for several months for servicing.

Generally, repair and maintenance work means work that stays local. Manufacturing/production/creation, that will go somewhere else. When I started puttering with antique clocks, it occurred to me that here was a job that you can’t really outsource: it is far too time consuming, and hundred year old plus clocks don’t take kindly to shipping back and forth. Its a niche market- you can buy a decent throw-away clock for $20, so antiques are a luxury. But that’s another type of work that will stick around.

None of these jobs, with the exception of doctors and lawyers, pay very well. But as work increasingly disappears here, we’ll consume less. The new economies will catch up, and eventually (sometime after you and I are dead) the Chinese will be the consumers, and we’ll be the manufacturers again because labour will be so cheap here.

What I’m really waiting for (and it will probably never come- but I can hope) is the day that someone realizes managers and corporate execs don’t do anything that someone in India or China couldn’t do cheaper and just as well. I think that would be a fine, fine day.