The US economy has drifted into finance, real estate speculation, and weapons, and that shift is bad for ordinary workers and for the country's sense of itself.

• The country's biggest outputs are now lending, property speculation, surveillance cameras, and missiles — not useful goods.
• Decades of free-trade thinking said moving factories abroad was cheaper and smarter, so the loss of manufacturing was worth it.
• Critics like Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan warned that a nation that makes nothing loses something real, and were dismissed as economically illiterate.
• The cost is not just jobs — dignity and self-respect come from making things that are useful or beautiful, and people can feel that absence.

Outlook: Expect the argument for rebuilding American manufacturing to keep gaining ground as the case for pure efficiency loses public support.