I would argue that labor costs had virtually nothing to do with the decline in labor intensive manufacturing in this country. Technology/efficiency has simply made labor unnecessary for many/most manufacturing operations, even as they achieve greater outputs. What labor intensive industry is left (and there is not much that hasn’t gone robotic) left the country for labor prices that we could realistically not compete with under any circumstances. I do fear that technology + growing consumer populations abroad is leading to the huge increase in income distribution to the top 1% over the last 20 years (at the expense of the “middle-class” and that this is (or will become) a huge problem for us in the near future if it doesn’t stop.