Three years ago I traveled by car through many small towns of the southeastern US. I was shocked to see very little activity or people as they had become close to ghost towns with 75% of the buildings empty. In each there would be the remnants of a factory closed as well. I would guess that these were mostly textile plants upon which the town was built. I wondered where the people who had inhabited these one industry towns had all gone to, but gone they were. I found it a scary forerunner because I also live in a small town largely dependent on one industry.
When I enter that great bastion of American small town capitalism, Wal-Mart, I can't find a shirt that wasn't made somewhere in the far east, mostly in communist China. Duh....... Is there something wrong with this scene? The reason that the American economy is going to Hell in a handbasket is not free trade with Canada (China killed our textile industry as well) but corporate greed running unchecked. In the USA today and Canada as well more and more people are employed in the service industry. The service industry cycles wealth but does not produce it and balance of trade debt increases. However, the reason that the USA has a balance of trade deficit with Canada is largely petroleum based and not a result of free trade.