Our transition from a Fordist mass production economy, based on the assembly line, to a knowledge economy...[snip by DoDo]

This reads as if this just happened, rather than being made to happen by pursuing policies of de-industrialization, and by accepting policies with de-industrialization as a natural consequence, whether promoting the power of transnational corporations with mis-named "trade" agreements that primarily focus on the freedom of corporations to exercise corporate power across national borders, or the "fight inflation first" strategy of the Fed that biases the US exchange rate against the interest of exporters and toward the interests of importers, all the while their primary target is the prevention of full employment.

Or, to put it another way: trade imbalances make a national economy a fantasy; the Fordist mass production economy is alive and well, it just exists on a larger scale, with the assembly lines relocated to China.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}