Bruce, Your thinking is not uncommon, and seems to be predicated on the existing industries and markets that you can see and possibly imagine right now.
What happens in all societies, and particularly the US, is that there is a continual process of innovation and continuos introduction of new products/processes. Many of these innovations and products address markets that did not exist prior to the intrducution of the product/process.
I think that if you ware waiting for a destuction of the middle-class in the US, you will have a long wait. There will obviously continue the constant process of resturcturing of almost all levels of society as some people move into and out of different levels and some classes shrink or expand in size, but that is not unexpected or different to any time in the past.
I personally dont think that the service-based economy was ever intended as a complete replacement of the manufacturing based economy despite the way ot was presented by many business magaznes (you have to remember their job is to primarily make a story they will sell the magazine), but that a growing service-sector merely proivides another leg of the economic base, that incidentally and conveniently, absorbed some of the workers from out of date manufacturing/industrial operations that were doomed to eventually fail in the US. It is obvious to see why ramping the service sector story was very attractive to politicians and business magazines, but hard to see that few saw it as more than a convenient story to use.
The economic resturcturing of all western societies to take advantage of and accomadate the entry of China/India will continue.
I dont see it as the end of the world for the western economies, just an opportunity to use to their best advantage, and a challenge to ensure that policies adopted by all players have some sort of general fairness attached.
