Thirty years ago when I was in high school and everyone felt comfortable in Reaganomics, the U.S. was producing and manufacturing, and we still had specialty stores, my high school business teacher told us that America would become a country who no longer manufactures and the specialty stores would be eaten by giants. At that time most of us 14-15 years old's couldn't imagine because we had grown up in it.

Within 10 years, 1993/1994, there were WalMarts border to border, Sam's, and Costco. Mom and Pop stores died, specialty stores disappeared, and manufacturing started going overseas.

We became a service industry - not a product industry and therefore uniqueness would be how we specialize.

We failed ourselves by not keeping manufacturing at home and having products to export. We gave product knowledge to other countries who became our competition with below market labor.