Wage costs, unions, health care… Doesn’t really matter because the standard of living in the U.S. is too high in comparison to the Asian and Indian standard of living. We have no comparative advantage in most things anymore that would make a company manufacture here. In fact, we usually don’t manufacture here and increasingly jobs higher up the value ladder are being offshored. Instead we can look forward to a general decline in the standard of living once the real estate refi is over. Not pretty, but if there is no new industry to employ the masses I believe the U.S. will soon become a second rate economic power.