Advancements in technology, robotics and computers, caused workers to be unable to compete with hardware so jobs were outsourced to Japan and Germany. Despite this lack of technological development in the US though, there was nowhere for capitalists to put all of the profits reaped between the end of the Second World War and 1970, so speculative financial instruments were created, through which capitalists could reap massive winfalls from transactions with no production of goods nor provision of services. When it became apparent that the payoffs from speculative bubbles far exceeded that of industrial production, companies divested themselves of their obligations to workers and everyone's money was herded into the speculative casino. And this explains how the vast majority of consumer goods purchased in the US are now manufactured in plants by workers in Communist China while the gap between rich and poor in the US explodes. So when Lowell stole the British patents and used the readily available slave-produced cotton to launch the textile industry in the US, it's just like America de-industrializing and moving to an economy based on the accumulation of unpayable sovereign debt, capital leveraged up to one thousand times it's real value, and consumer goods that cost relatively little as they are made by Communists.
