we manufacture more now than ever before I don't understand how you can expect this statement to carry your thesis in isolation. Let's say you earn more money

we manufacture more now than ever before I don't understand how you can expect this statement to carry your thesis in isolation. Let's say you earn more money in your job than you ever have before. Does that mean you're running "in the black"? No, because you might have also increased your expenditures out of proportion with your increase in income. It's not enough to observe that manufacturing has increased, for imagine a country with ever-increasing manufacturing but declining exports of manufactured goods. Clearly it's possible for your observation to be true whilst not indicating a strong economy. Again, I'm no economist, but I know enough to distrust one Pollyanna graph when I see one.