The Glade 4.0

Yes, the quality of life was much worse in the mid 1700s. It seems the U.K. has actually improved although their empire and world influence shrank.

Just off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of industries where American companies export worldwide...Boeing for airliners, and surprisingly, surgical robots.

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

Yeah, the US produces about one fifth of everything manufactured in the in the world. The first things that came to mind that the US exports were cars, turbines, pharma and airplanes.
Growth in manufacturing output is pretty steady, and while we employ about the same number of people in the manufacturing sector that we did in 1950, their output in 2007 was 600% that of 1950. The top three US exports were worth $174.2 billion in 2008; that's aircraft, semiconductors and cars. We're the third biggest exporter in the world at $1.291 trillion worth of shipped goods.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

We are also the world's number one exporter of entertainment, movies, music, television, political speeches, etc.

We also import a heck of a lot of stuff, and just for fun

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Where do we export cars to? Or are we counting the factories that GM set-up in China, staffed by Chinese workers producing Buicks as an "export"?

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Agriculture

Please bear in mind, I know that we haven't abandoned manufacturing entirely. I'm speaking in terms of manufacturing relative to consumption levels. If our manufacturing had been "keeping up," rather than us relying increasingly on importing, we wouldn't have a preposterous and unsustainable trade deficit that we've been running up for decades.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades