Imagine a politician running for President during the Industrial Revolution, standing up in front of the country and grumbling over the loss of farming jobs.  They would decry the loss of thousands of agricultural jobs due to the booming manufacturing sector.  Looking back upon this with the eyes of someone who owes much of their prosperity to the Industrial Revolution, this politician now seems to be a fool.  Yet, someone in that day probably would have large support for such a farming-sympathetic position, just as politicians such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton now have support for the loss of manufacturing jobs.  One may not see this as a fair comparison because farming jobs were lost to “progress,”while manufacturing jobs are lost to “unfair trade practices.”  Wrong!  The loss of manufacturing jobs has been a result of technological changes and a shift toward white-collar jobs in the economy (aka progress).  By the way, the unemployment rate is lower nowadays with increased trade than before the liberalization of the 90s.  As well, the economy has continued to add jobs, more than replacing any lost manufacturing jobs.  Trade has replaced worse jobs with better ones, without creating long-term employment.  So, when Obama and Clinton speak of the dangers of unfair trade and the damage it has done our manufacturing sector (which is producing at record output levels and profits), it is no more intelligent than someone complaining over the “harmful effects”of the Industrial Revolution, and we all know how bad that one turned out for our standard of living.  So the next time Obama is on your T.V. telling you he will “fight for the worker,” and Clinton is telling you it is a fact that “you cannot be a strong nation without a strong manufacturing sector,” what they are really saying is “we will fight so strong for the labor union lobbyists that we will send the U.S. back into pre-Industrial Revolution times.”