Let's face it. It's a good thing for American companies to use Indonesia and China for low-wage manufacturing labor and keep American workers on staff for high-wage jobs like engineering and management.
When you look at it just like that it can seem simple in the short term.
However we are responsible for much of the world's rapid modernization through exactly that process.
The companies creating the factories and infrastructure in those places to accomodate that is why many of those nations are now using or have used that infrastructure to rapidly modernize and understand how to do it.
Once they do that they become major consumers of resources they never were.
Demand for those resources goes up, supply remains relatively stable, or even goes down, and the result is everything costs more for us. The American dollar is worth less (actualy the foriegn currency is just worth more so it translates to less purchasing power in trade.) The quality of life for the average America goes down.
Your value as a nation is based on how much better you are economicly than other nations, and that gap is quickly closing. That outsourcing is one of the primary reasons, though it is too late to put the cork back in the bottle most places.
The faster other parts of the world modernize the faster the the quality of life in America goes down.
We have been the primary consumer with parts of Europe since industrialization started in the 17th and 18th centuries. That means the foriegn demand was limited in most of the world for numerous products.
We were also the only ones that really needed most natural resources.
That is changing very rapidly now.
The problem is the modernizing nations are emulating western life, but there is not really enough resources for the entire world to live that lifestyle.
Plus many corporations and businesses are international now, so they have no specific loyalty to America or its economy. In the past they were based in America, production was in America, and the target consumer was Americans, and they were the primary consumer in the world.
And businesses got thier foriegn natural resources cheap from third world nations that had very little use for it themselves (limited demand.)
Now the production is elsewhere, the consumer is not limited to Americans and is all over the world and expanding, and they are much less tied to the American economy.
The foriegn natural resources are also no longer cheap because there is much greater demand for them.
America also has many taxes, restrictions, insurance requirements, wage requirements, people that bring fraud charges at the slightest upset etc and many businesses are as a result far less attached to America, it is no longer the ideal place to actualy conduct most of your business. It is just a consumer market now, not a good business home.
So there is changes going on that will make the factors governing the American quality of life change rapidly over the coming decades and it will be steadily down for our quality of life. It also means our voice in what values and rights are most important in the world will diminish over time. Not only abroad, but even in our own nation as growing foriegn powers gain a larger voice.
It will very likely effect things like small arms. Very few up and coming powers like mere peasant citizens to possess arms.
You will have to work more hours to purchase the same amount, and foriegn influences on various rights and privelidges will become greater.
The balances put in place in our nation value individuals over absolute effeciency. You won't see those values as present in the future world. How many other nations actualy encourage 'small arms proliferation' in thier borders in the hands of the people? That is an individual rights thing, a balance against those seeking power and efficiency at the expense of liberty and freedom...
Pressures will likely increase to restrict such things, expand who is prohibited, etc
If some American citizens have a problem with it, well the military, security contractors, and UN peacekeepers will be ready to help the American government deal with any situation that arises. To squash those 'terrorists'.
