Eventually our happy couch potatoes will be earning the same wages as the Chinese workers who produce Christmas tree lights, and then they will not be so happy. You know, this is what is happening in the American clothing industry right now. Korean or Guatemalan women doing the same work receive about one dollar per hour and no fringe benefits. The consequence is that American clothing factories are shutting down, one after another, and the companies are having the work done in Korea or Guatemala. The clothes are then shipped back to America, where the yuppies and the couch potatoes can buy them for less than if they were made with American labor, and the companies can make more profit.
Wages gradually rise in Korea and Guatemala, while they gradually fall in America.
In addition, some industries will move entirely to one country or the other to take maximum advantage of local peculiarities in demographics or other resources. And when one of these industries that moves is an essential one, the country from which it moves loses its autonomy. They are counting on the process of increasing interdependence and wage equalization moving slowly enough so that Americans don't become alarmed and try to pull back before the process has gone so far that we can no longer extricate ourselves. It's a bit like the old story of cooking the frogs slowly enough so that they don't realize they're being cooked until it's too late to try to jump out of the cooking pot. If the media bosses can pull it off, it will be one more demonstration of their ability to persuade a Gentile nation to commit mass suicide.