That is China's past. Our way of doing things is China's future. Highly educated and efficient employees. There are no manufacturing lines anymore. All new manufacturing will be replacing labor extensively. This will be true in all countries not just the United States. Industrial growth and innovative growth will be in the developed and developing world. Innovative growth will be more slated towards the developed world. Western economics has won and it is my opinion it will be the direction of the world.
Given out current economic system, greater efficiency and productivity means fewer jobs for everyday folks, bigger payout for CEOs. If greater efficiency means fewer work hours for the rank and file workers so that more people can have jobs, it would be a different matter.
The system that is winning is highly mechanized production with the guidance of highly educated workers. In the past employees were valued for their labor, but agriculture and manufacturing does not require as much of that labor anymore. In the future employees will be valuable because of their knowledge. Growth will take intelligence, organization, and planning. That is the future. There will be low unemployment. Just my 2 cents.
There will be work to do in the conversion stage that is not only for the highly educated. Also the service industry will become the home of most of them in the long run. The new "gold collar" workers. People who didn't go to college, but have almost no expenses and an excess of money even though they have a low paying job. Birth rates in developed countries are going down hill fast and this is one of the main reasons. You will have two classes. The middle class will turn into the upper middle class and the rest will be low wage employee's who feel like they are doing well because they have low expenses. I'm not saying this is a great future. Merely that it is our future.